V 





RESTLING AND WAITING 



SERMONS 



JOHN F. W. WARE 



"Hold in, hold on, and hold out/" 

J. F. W. w. 



BOSTON 

George H. Ellis, 141 Franklin Street 
1882 



29 lp 





3v 



Copyright, 
1882, 

GEORGE H. ELLIS. 



INTRODUCTION. 



John Fothergill Waterhouse Ware, the 
son of Henry Ware, Jr., and Elizabeth Watson 
Waterhouse, was born in Boston, Aug. 31, 18 18, 
and died in Milton, Feb. 26, 188 1. A graduate 
of Harvard College in the class of 1838, and of 
the Cambridge Divinity School in 1842, he was 
minister of Unitarian churches in Fall River, 
Cambridgeport, Baltimore, and Boston, succes- 
sively. In the latter city, he was the successor 
of Dr. Channing and Dr. Gannett, and had 
charge of the Arlington Street Church, formerly 
located in Federal Street. 

Those wno knew him in life remember him. 
Those who knew him not will find him at his 
truest in these sermons. The pulpit is the 
preacher's confessional. The anointed of his 
people know how to receive and shrive him 
there. The sermons brought together in this 



iv 



INTRODUCTION. 



book do not give an adequate idea of the scope 
and richness of his ministry. His work sur- 
passed his word, strong as that was. Home and 
camp, church and school, acknowledge his help- 
ing hand. The rich and the poor thank and 
bless him. To the home, he has given Home 
Life, a book which is a grateful memorial of his 
youth, a witness of his manhood, and now a 
keepsake which will long maintain his ministry 
by the fireside. His "white tracts," as the sol- 
diers called them, flew in and out the camp like 
the doves of the old Arsenal. He also revised 
and republished the Silent Pastor, for use in the 
hospitals. He labored for the Church, as a son 
honoring his father and his mother, filial love 
blending ever with missionary zeal. The freed- 
men remember what he did for their education 
and uplifting. 

A few friends, believing that the word which 
had helped them would help others, have chosen 
these sermons and published them. Nor would 
they disavow a loyal impulse to offer some trib- 
ute to the memory of the faithful pastor, true 
friend, and honest man. They know that the 
only honor he would value is the privilege of 



INTRODUCTION. 



V 



further ministry. In hours of pain and weak- 
ness, he never gave up the hope of preaching 
again. If, with God's blessing, this book only 
half fulfils his longing for further service on the 
earth, it will wholly accomplish the purpose and 
hope of its compilers. 

GEORGE LEONARD CHANEY. 

Boston, March 26, 1882. 



CONTENTS. 



Sermon Page 

I. Wrestling and Waiting i 

" I will not let thee go except thou bless me." — Gen. xxxii., 26. 

II. What Sufficeth? . . . . 15 

" Show us the Father, and it sufficeth." — John xiv., 8. 

III. Day unto Day 28 

" Day unto day uttereth speech." — Psalm xix., 2. 

IV. Easter 37 

"And I know not where they have laid him." — John xx., 13. 

V. One Thing I do 52 

"This one thing I do." — Phil, iii., 13. 

VI. The Kingdom of God 65 

"The kingdom of God." — Luke xvi., 16. 

VII. Gentle Influences 77 

" And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, 
that David took an harp and played with his hand, so Saul was refreshed, 
and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him." — I. Sam. xvi., 23. 

VIII. The Man Within 91 

" The hidden man of the heart." — I. Peter iii., 4. 

IX. None but Christ 102 

" Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life." 
— John vi., 68. 

X. Seasons of Quiet 117 

" A place which was named Gethsemane." — Mark xiv., 32. 



Vlll 



CONTENTS. 



Sermon Page 
XL The Fiery Furnace I2 6 

" Nor the smell of fire had passed on them." — Dan. in., 27. 

XII. Faint, yet Pursuing 

" Faint, yet pursuing." — Judges viii., 4. 

XIII. Together with God 147 

" Laborers together with God." — I. Cor. iii., 9. 

XIV. Oil and Wine j$g 

"Oil and wine." — Luke x., 34. 

XV. Life and Immortality 173 

"Jesus Christ, who has brought life and immortality to light." — 
II. Tim. i., 10. 

XVI. The Tenth Beatitude 187 

" Blessed is he that waiteth." — Dan. xii., 12. 

XVII. Helps 201 

' ' They used helps. ' ' — Acts xxvii. ,17. 

XVIII. The Silent Comforter 213 

" Sleep on now, and take your rest." — Matt, xxvi., 45. 

XIX. Fragrant Lives 226 

" And the house was filled with the odor." — John xii., 3. 

XX. What She Could 237 • 

" She hath done what she could." — Mark xiv., 8. 

XXI. TlBNI AND OMRI 248 

" So Tibni died, and Omri reigned." — I. Kings xvi., 22. 

XXII. Silent Building 259 

"And the house which King Solomon built for the Lord was built 
of stone, made ready before it was brought thither : so that there was 
neither hammer, nor axe, nor any tool of iron, heard in the house 
while it was in building. So was he seven years in building it." — 
*I. Kings vi., 2, 7, 38. 



CONTENTS. 



Sermon 

XXIII. John, Jesus, and Paul 

"John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness." — Matt, iii., i. 

"Jesus Christ, the Son of God." — Mark i., i. 

" Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ." — II. Cor. i., i. 

XXIV. Life's Brook-sides, 

"The brook in the way." — Psalm ex., 7. 

XXV. The Things which remain 

"The things which remain." — Rev. iii., 2. 

XXVI. The Best Fruit the Last plucked 

"Two or three berries on the top of the uppermost bough." — 
Isaiah xvii., 6. 

XXVII. Our Years 

"The days of our years." — Psalm xc, 10. 



[May 4, 1879.] 



I. 



WRESTLING AND WAITING. 

" I will not let thee go except thou bless me." — Genesis xxxii., 26. 

I wonder if this experience of Jacob by the brook 
Jabbok may not have been somewhat akin to that of 
Jesus in the wilderness. It is impossible really to 
know anything about it ; but do they not each in 
some sense represent the personal conflict of two 
young men coming up to face the first great crisis of 
life, — a wrestling with the great fate that confronts 
them, a struggle for that moral, mental supremacy and 
calm which we all feel the need of as we first actually 
meet that life for which we have been preparing ? In 
the wrestling of the night, in the temptation of the 
wilderness, each man may recognize his own expe- 
rience. They are very human incidents, and do not 
require the ordinary bald, literal interpretation to make 
them solemn and effective. As allegories, epitomizing 
universal experience, they are of as true value as if 
they were statements of fact. 

Fleeing from his exacting father-in-law, Jacob had 
approached the place where he knew that his brother 
Esau had established himself. Naturally uneasy at 
this fact, — for he had not forgotten how he had cheated 
him out of his birthright or how he had afterward 



2 



WRESTLING AND WAITING. 



defrauded him of his blessing, — he sends messengers 
to him, who were to address him in terms of respect. 
Esau, without sending any reply, sets out immediately 
to meet his brother. More anxious than ever, Jacob 
divides his herds and his servants into two bands, 
separated by wide interval, so that, in case of attack, 
that which was behind and with which his household 
was might escape, at the same time again sending 
servants forward with a gift taken from the choicest 
of his flocks and of his herds. It was while awaiting 
the result of this embassage that the incident from 
which the text is taken occurred. 

The last division of herds had passed over the brook 
by which he had encamped, and Jacob was left alone. 
And it was night. Plenty of work for conscience to do, 
as it is apt to be when night brings us to face a foe- 
coming morrow. And Jacob had much in his past con- 
nection with his brother for conscience to busy itself 
about. It was the great hazard moment of his life, and 
there were conditions to the problem of which he was 
not the master. He was a very unhappy man, and 
sorely perplexed. Then there appeared to him, as the 
Scripture says, a man who wrestled with him a large 
part of the night. In some way, Jacob was seriously 
injured. His thigh was dislocated or strained. Crip- 
pled, he was not mastered ; and, the day beginning to 
dawn, his antagonist desired to be released. Somehow, 
he seems to have been in Jacob's power, could only get 
away by Jacob's consent (which ought to shut out the 
ordinary belief that his antagonist was the Divine Being 
himself). Jacob has the power of dictating terms, — the 
condition of the conqueror. His reply is, " I will not 



WRESTLING AND WAITING. 



3 



let thee go except thou bless me." We simply do not 
know anything about this incident, the narrative of 
which starts a flood of unanswerable questions ; and it 
were better to hasten to get our moral from the words, 
than to linger over possible or impossible interpreta- 
tions of the event. 

The simple elements of the incident are these, — a 
contest between Jacob and an adversary, in which the 
adversary gets the worst of it. He is resisted, held, and 
in place of any proposed mischief is compelled to bless. 
The incident is striking, the lesson invaluable. 

For here, in epitome, is human experience. Jacob 
may stand for you and for me, for any, for every man ; 
and the antagonist for our baser selves and the baser 
things of the world, and the wrestling, the struggle 
that has to go on between us. We grow up to that 
point where we are to undertake the handling of our- 
selves. That certain shield which home has been, that 
certain support, guide, which parents have been, expires 
by limitation. We cease being child, we begin to be 
man. The bars are thrown back through which we 
have gazed at the field of life, while they have re- 
strained us from entering. We enter. As we pass the 
line, we at once meet opposition ; and our first work, 
duty, experience, is resistance. We are at once put at 
task, at the task life keeps us at ever after. It would 
be very pleasant could this first part be only a sort of 
school-boy's holiday, in which we could wander here 
and there over the field, and pick up every joy. We 
would like to throw an idle hook in this stream, lie 
under that tree, enjoy the sweet. do-nothing, letting our 
eyes lazily rest themselves on sky and earth, refreshing 



4 



WRESTLING AND WAITING. 



and informing the other senses, taking in the keen, but 
superficial, relish of all the novel wonders about us. It 
is not at holiday we are put, but at school, and our 
masters are hard and exacting. We may not doze and 
dream and get an animal fill of pleasure first. First we 
have to go to work, and our first work is hard work. 
Inexperienced and ignorant, timid and weak, we are 
called upon to resist the subtlest foes of the soul. If 
we take the Book of Genesis, the first duty to which 
the first man is called upon is the duty of resistance. 
Before he does anything, he must resist somebody. If 
we take the Gospels, they repeat the story. Before 
Jesus goes out to do, he retires to resist. Resistance — 
the negative, the opposite of will — is our primary obli- 
gation. The young possibilities of virtue seem to be so 
nurtured. We have to get strong, assured in our re- 
sisting powers, before we can essay anything by way of 
progress. Before we grow, we must be able to stand, 
and overcome the powers that would not have us stand. 

There are many things that will put themselves in 
the way of a growing soul, many that must be at once 
met and resisted. At first, we have not-helps. The 
mission of things seems to be not to help you live, but 
to force your death ; not to establish, but to overthrow. 
It is not that hindrances strew the way, — obstacles you 
might expect to meet and to have to surmount, — but 
more than hindrances, positive, virulent opponents. 
All the way up, through the various grades of nature, 
existence seems to be a struggle, a fight for itself. 
Nothing is cradled, but everything attacked. Nurse, 
care, afterward ; at first, hindrance, opposition, things 
to be learned which other things seem bound to prevent 



WRESTLING AND WAITING. 



5 



your learning. Once establish yourself, and you get 
help, friends; reach for and receive support. Nothing 
can be drearier than the first life of the seed in the cold 
and dark, its way to make against hindrance. If you 
go into a garden or a field some days after your sowing, 
you will see how the great vigor of tiny shoots has 
pushed aside the earth crust, perhaps has lifted a lump 
of dirt, or a chip, or a stone, — how it has overcome 
resistance, is born by virtue of that into beauty and 
light. 

Once established, once in the light, things begin to 
consent, become friends. So with our virtues. The 
law seems to be resistance as the condition of taking 
root, of becoming established, of growth. We do not 
begin and just grow easily and pleasantly, but through 
all sorts of pains and aches and mishaps, — the frictions, 
jars, antagonisms of other things. Our moral hin- 
drances naturally divide themselves into two classes, — 
those from within, self-born, nurtured, grown ; those 
from without, which have no self about them. If it 
were worth while to stop long enough to say it, one 
might perhaps say that the self things are the more ob- 
stinate, while they perhaps are less recognized, watched, 
controlled. The things that go wrong with us, the self- 
hindrances, are largely matters of temperament ; and 
temperament is a thing never entirely original, but 
largely of inheritance : it is the twist to my nature, the 
thing I find in me and that starts me the me that I am. 
If I understand myself at all, my great trouble as a 
moral being is with a certain something which goes by 
this name. As I understand it, it is the sub-structure 
of my whole being. It underlies my life, my thinking, 



6 



WRESTLING AND WATTING. 



and my doing. There is a peculiarity native to me, as 
sap to the tree or blood to the body, which shapes my 
thoughts and methods, my hopes and my deeds. It 
has its felicities, it has its infelicities. No man's tem- 
perament is wholly the one or the other. The felicities 
we set aside. We do not want them now. The infelic- 
ities are our concern. What is to be done with them ? 
Shall I yield to them, and say : " This is my tempera- 
ment. I cannot help myself. I obey the dictates of 
nature ? " Obedience to nature is very well where the 
dictates are all right ; but, where they are wrong, they 
are to be disobeyed, just as any wrong thing is. That 
is what we live for. Temperament is amenable to the 
laws of discipline. Its imperiousness, its tyranny, is to 
be resisted. The unlovely is to be grown away from, 
the lovely grown into, — two distinct processes. Jacob 
resisted his opponent ; but he did more. He held him. 
The unruly part of temperament is to be more than 
resisted : it is to be held hard, and turned at last into 
an ally, a friend. A blessing, it is to be held until it 
bless. There is an illustration of what temperament 
may become when its bad is well ruled and its good is 
master, in the apostle John. In his early discipleship, 
he belongs to a club called " Sons of Thunder," loud- 
mouthed, noisy, restless, revolutionary men, the Social- 
ists, the Nihilists of their day, — wants the lightning 
to destroy the Samaritans. He is as hot and impulsive 
and rash as Peter. 

In the maturer days of his intercourse with Jesus, 
he lays his head upon that sainted bosom, becomes 
the Christ's special favorite, and in his mid-life and 
old age is as the microcosm of gentleness and love. 



WRESTLING AND WAITING. 



7 



It is not that a new nature, a new being, is given him 
through his changed faith, but that he has through 
his faith so worked upon that ardent, vindictive tem- 
perament, has so resisted, chastened, held it, that it 
has ended not merely in blessing others, but himself. 
He has clone that most radical, difficult thing, — not 
destroyed his temperament, not got another one, which 
no man can ever do, for it is that which bases indi- 
viduality and keeps one man from being like every 
other man, — but he has held the inimical thing in his 
temperament until he has wrung from it a blessing. 
He is the John he is not by inheritance, not through 
force of temperament, not by an act of nature, but by 
a resolute self-culture that has whipped the offending 
Adam out, and has supplanted the natural, inherited, 
by a broader, braver, better, sweeter self. I do not 
know anywhere a more striking illustration of what 
may be done at the very root of things where one 
really takes hold. It is overturn, it is annihilation, it 
is rooting out the bad and overgrowing the place of 
it with the good, and making the other things of the 
temperament the sweeter and the stronger. In that 
way, not merely may adversities be made friends, but 
self-antagonisms be changed to blessings. What we 
need all through is the attitude, the endurance, of that 
midnight wrestler by the brook Jabbok. We may be 
wounded, crippled, bear the mark of bruise and scar 
of wound, feel it our lives long, though we may not 
show it. But we are the conquerors, and the van- 
quished thing has made us over ; has been compelled 
not only to yield, but to do that thing so doubly hard 
for a vanquished foe, — bless, 



8 



WRESTLING AND WAITING. 



, So it is with the whole catalogue of the self things, — 
passions, appetites, prejudices, dislikes, habits. The 
thing we really ought to do with them is to turn them 
in to do better work. We do not readily see it that 
way. They are imperative, and mean to control, and 
we get an easy habit of letting them. If we get brave 
enough to make some trial of ourselves against them, 
we soon give over. We tell children to try and then 
try again. That is at the basis of domestic training, 
and it is the trying again that makes the child. We 
who are mature do not do as we tell children. We do 
not try. We do not resist. We become impatient, 
despairing, give up. Giving up is the most unhappy 
thing a man does. To give up is to take one's life, 
is to win curse, not blessing. One is never to give 
up, but to hold on and to hold out, and compel the 
beatitude which comes of healthy struggle, though he 
should not reach that which comes of a complete vic- 
tory. These and all troublesome things within us 
have great capacity to bless, only we do not yield to 
them, only we make them feel us. 

Beside self-hindrances are others from outside, and 
very various. They are to be treated the same way, 
made to yield the same reward. 

In every day, we have disappointments, — common, 
trifling, troubling things. Life is a good deal made 
up of them. They are its severest trials. We bear 
great things with at least a show of equanimity. We 
break under little ones. If we know there is some- 
thing serious, we muster our energies and face it. But 
little, annoying things which spring at us from the 
wayside, from unexpected corners,, at most unwelcome 



WRESTLING AND WAITING. 



9 



moments, just at the time of all others when we fancied 
all going smoothly, just where we can least brook 
opposition, postponement, or delay, — these every one 
feels to be serious annoyances of life, and of no special 
use. But suppose, — instead of fretting and disappoint- 
ment over the rain that keeps you indoors, over the 
dinner that is not ready or is badly cooked, over the 
man who is not punctual, over the investment that 
does not pay, over annoyance of domestic or child, — 
instead of scolding and fuming about the present, 
immediate form of the trial, you hold it, study it, 
reason about it, look at it every way, turn it over on 
all sides, and see if something cannot be made of it, 
if there be not some fine gold there. • Instead of taking 
these into your temper, suppose you take them into 
your heart, and hold them there till all shadow of the 
ugliness of temper is melted away, and the blessing 
comes, — the blessing that as surely comes, under these 
conditions, as the blessings of sunlight and spring 
breezes come after the fret of east winds, and low 
leaden clouds, and dull rains or hasty showers. Sup- 
pose one were to make it, not a principle only, but a 
habit, to hold on to every trying and adverse thing until 
it blesses, plucking away the disguise beneath which 
lies the beatitude ! It would not be long before all 
these wearing, worrying irritations would be trans- 
formed into angels of light, teaching the once captious 
spirit great and solemn truths, and leading it into 
gentleness, patience, and forbearance. Every one of 
us who has had any self-discipline knows what has 
come to himself out of the most hopeless elements in 
him, simply through handling them wisely, compelling 



IO WRESTLING AND WAITING. 

them to do good work. Every such one knows how, 
out of the little irritations and vexations of life, once, 
like the little foxes of the field, destroying all that 
was fair and manly, he has made great blessings ; and 
you will generally find the happiness and security 
of maturer life to lie just where hard wrestling has 
wrung blessings out of hostile things. Then there are 
a thousand things in one's intercourse with others 
which are unpleasant, vexatious, irritating. Some men 
and women are merely annoyances, aversions. We 
don't see why they were made, or why they should 
themselves care much to live. They make us feel 
uncomfortable, if they come near us. They cross our 
paths every way, ' and if we cross over to the other 
side, they cross over too. They contrive to run 
counter to our wishes, to set themselves against our 
prejudices, to throw ridicule upon our principles, to 
set things awry, to be every way repellent, to offend 
our tastes or somehow to be only disagreeable. And, 
where things do not run to this extreme, there still 
is much in every-day intercourse, at home and with 
friends, which puts us into an uncomfortable humor, 
and makes us wish ourselves well rid of such society. 
This is the first, the outside feeling, and too frequently 
the only and the lasting one. It does only and purely 
harm more to ourselves than to them. Let a man 
become conscious of the folly of allowing the petty 
annoyances of character or conduct to have so much 
influence over him. Let him resist the annoyance, 
hold it till he sees how, by that very antagonism, some 
good thing is drawn out and strengthened in himself, 
or some bad thing avoided. Let him hold it till out of 



WRESTLING AND WAITING. 



II 



the ashes of aversion shall spring a true, courteous 
regard, till he find a blessing in that which had been 
only a plague. For myself, I confess that, among the 
people of worth whom I have known, not a few were 
those with- whom my first intercourse was unpleasant, 
and my first impressions repulsive. And I have no 
small self-rebuke at that want of moral steadfastness 
which neglects to hold back the crude or unpleasant 
opinion, that lack of fidelity to conviction which allows 
me still to refuse to hold the man till I find the bless- 
ing in him. 

The truth will bear to be carried higher, among 
the great troubles and sorrows of life, — the sorrows 
in which, long time, the stricken spirit can discern 
no light. Nothing would seem, — did we not know it 
by experience, — nothing does seem to many still so 
utterly impossible as that any blessing can come of 
sorrow. Of none of Christ's Beatitudes are we so 
skeptical as of that which promises blessing to them 
that mourn. And yet, hold sorrow till its more selfish 
aspect passes, till it turn its religious side to you, till 
time and experience and faith do their work, till you 
feel, not its gloom, but its glory; not its storm, but its 
peace ; not its loss, but its gain ; not its cross, but its 
crown. Do not, through any device, lose its sanctify- 
ing influence, the greatest loss the soul can meet. Do 
not flee from it, or seek to smother it, or yield to it, 
but hold it, — hold it till it blesses, till you have con- 
secrated it by prayer and submission, till all other 
views grow dim, and only its religious side, its heavenly 
side, God's side, is toward you. Keep it till it bless, 
though it long delay, and you will then see how, out 



12 



WRESTLING AND WAITING. 



of seeming evil, God educes good ; how, out of the 
darkness of earth, he brings the light ineffable of 
heaven ; how, as night precedes day, so sadness and 
suffering precede peace ; how, as day issues from night, 
peace from trouble comes. 

That surely is a mysterious, but not the less real, 
power of blessing which lies within every well con- 
tested, rightly borne trouble. He knows but little 
who supposes that, if there is to be a blessing in his 
earthly lot, he shall at once detect it, as he would 
who, searching for gold, should look to find it scat- 
tered liberally upon the surface. The things of per- 
manent value are mostly hidden, — have to be sought. 
Did not he of old entertain angels unawares, — only 
know them, get their blessing, as they departed ? Did 
not Jesus walk with his disciples, and only as he left 
them did they see that the crucified was risen ? And 
does not God still hold men's eyes, and behind dis- 
guises conceal the ultimate good ? In lesser things, 
man has learned the divine law. The pure and glit- 
tering metal lies in the dull ore. The diamond's coat 
is rough, uttering no prophecy of the wealth beneath. 
Forbidding forms enclose choicest souls. Only as 
one perseveres, gets through the crust, knocks off the 
covering, or penetrates beneath the surface, is it that 
the true worth is revealed. The form of trial, harsh 
and repulsive, and all its earlier manifestations setting 
strongly against a man's desire and will, makes him 
feel that it is only trial, only pain, — takes him on 
his lower side, his selfish, his earthly side. He may 
resist it because his nature prompts, or he thinks it 
duty, or because he feels that, if he do not, it will 
destroy him. 



WRESTLING AND WAITING. 



13 



He does not see beyond the necessity, the impulse 
of resistance ; and the resistance is that dogged, soul- 
less resistance wherewith so many confront their lot. 
It must be borne ; and he will set himself to bear it. 
It must be met ; and he will set himself to meet it. 
But, as to any good in it, any blessing to be got out 
of that harsh and repulsive fact, any yield from it 
beyond a dogged bearing, he does not see it. If it 
be a serious thing, he may grow rebellious and ques- 
tion God's right or God's love. Let him, however, 
set himself to bear in a real child-spirit. By degrees, 
slow and uncertain at first, the painful pressure is 
relaxed a little. The shades are a little less dark. 
A possible good begins to be suspected. Then it is 
half-confessed, till finally, if he will but hold it long 
enough, he will find that this crushing thing, which 
was only gloom and only harm, has its bright and 
holy side, and where misery came blessings are left. 
The very thing which rose in its terrible might, and 
seemed about to sweep him from the earth, against 
which he had feared to measure his puny strength, is 
found to be a priceless good. 

" Surely," said one writing me who knew something 
of greater as lesser trial, "it is only our fault if we do 
not turn the hard trials into blessings ;• and I take 
shame that the things which were sent to sweeten 
I have so much allowed to embitter me." That state- 
ment grasps and holds the great truth and the great 
confession. We yield or resist, and are only embit- 
tered ; we hold, and grow sweet ; and where the sweet- 
ness is established, the beatitude follows. The secret 
of successful living is to extract blessings out of all 



14 



WRESTLING AND WAITING. 



conditions, to compel of them that. God does not lay 
them upon the surface, and sometimes he buries them 
deep. You may not know where the blessing lies 
except by search, weary and baffling many times. 
Where it seems most useless, there oftentimes is its 
most blessed reward. Learn the wisdom to hold every- 
thing till - it bless, though ill be heaped on ill. Make 
every discipline what the brook Jabbok was to Jacob, — 
the place of conquest and blessing. Let nothing go 
till you have probed it well, and got the uttermost 
of blessing, as the bee does not desert the bitterest 
flower till she gets the last drop of sweetness from it. 
Never withhold searching because it seems of no avail. 
Search as the woman did for her money, as the shep- 
herd did for his sheep, as the seeker did for his goodly 
pearl, — till you find. Having found, hold as Jacob did, 
and there shall be nothing in life, however frowning, 
hostile, baffling, which shall not have for you a bless- 
ing, — a blessing you would not surrender, a blessing 
you in no other way could attain. 



May 4, 1879. 



II. 



WHAT SUFFICETH? 

" Shew us the Father, and it sufficeth." — John xiv., 8. 

I have always felt the incident with which the text is 
connected to be one of deepest pathos. The air of 
gentle, suffering tenderness which invests this scene, as 
the whole language of that last interview, seems to 
deepen just here; and the little dialogue that intro- 
duces, and in part shapes the after-talk, is as exquisitely 
true to nature as touching in itself. 

I think that either you or I would have said just what 
Thomas did. It was an outspoken piece of honesty. 
He really did not know whither Jesus was going; and it 
was confidence in his Master, and not doubt, that made 
him say so. More confused men probably were never 
gotten before so great a fact ; and it was just as natural 
for Philip — and again you and I might have done the 
same — to say at the next point Jesus made: "Why, 
now there is really something ! Only show us the Fa- 
ther, and that is enough." And I think the very grave 
way in which Jesus met them, with a tenderly pained sur- 
prise, with a something in tone and look which was 
not rebuke, while it had a dash of disappointment about 
it, helped to steady them all, keep their tongues quiet, 
and their ears alert, and their minds active, receptive, if 
they failed of being wholly sympathetic. 



i6 



WHAT SUFFICETH? 



The showing of the Father was the whole mission of 
Jesus, his one aim, his life's work. Never was that other 
or less ; never was it other or more. The one thing was 
to manifest not the being of God, which was an already 
established fact with his nation, but the character of 
God, which they never had understood, which they 
of that generation were understanding very much less 
than such men as Isaiah and Daniel- — men of the 
most spiritual insight under the old dispensation — did. 
It was with faith when Jesus came a good deal as with 
art when Raphael came, with the Church when Savon- 
arola from within and Luther from without attempted 
its reform, — a time of grotesque deterioration, falseness 
and deadness, when the name of a great thing covered 
only ghastly and foul decay. Even the Jehovistic idea 
of God was very much degenerated, and may be said 
to have had little real following. The idea one man 
has of another is betrayed by the manner of his inter- 
course with him ; and, more than by any language, we 
reveal through the methods of our intercourse our in- 
terior conception of God. The Jew of Christ's time 
was a ritualist, the most servile believer in and follower 
of form, a formalist so rank and so mean as to always 
have had only the Saviour's contempt. Growing out 
of his formalism, its inevitable concomitant, was self- 
righteousness ; and to be self-righteous is inevitably to 
be hypocrite. The brave old prophet had said that God 
could not bear the sacrifice of bulls and of rams, and 
another as brave had added just what God did desire. 
All that had been displaced, and the tradition of the 
elders, abrogating the sure word of God, taught the 
cleanliness of the outside of cups and platters, in the 



WHAT SUFFICETH? 



17 



place of the service of the pure spirit and its pure 
worship. The Being who was to be served, to be sat- 
isfied, to be reached through such methods, could of 
course be in popular conception only a sort of Baal, an 
idol of a graver kind. You might use the most accred- 
ited phrase in speaking of God, — it signified nothing 
so long as in men's hearts and in men's approach there 
was no savor of him. So Jesus had to begin with 
showing what God was. Not who, so much as what 
his task. He was to show God in his real character. 
He was to place before men the attitude in which he 
stood toward his creatures, to teach his real relation, 
and in what true intercourse with him consisted ; not 
to teach the rudiments of a divine law, — that had been 
Moses' work ; not to pursue mental subtleties and dis- 
criminations, — that had been the rabbis' work ; not to 
read the stars, — that had been the work of Chaldeans 
and astrologers ; not to make investigation into the 
great occult realm of nature's many-chambered labora- 
tories, — that was in reserve for Tycho Brahe and Kepler 
and Da Vinci, Newton, Cuvier, Agassiz, and all the host 
of them. All these for other men, some of them for 
other times. In these he had no part, with these no 
interference. Simple and unlearned in the world's 
way, as the world's lore, his one limited work was to 
show the Father, to shred away the feeble as the false 
which obscured the glory of the divine countenance, 
and make men see in himself the reflected attributes of 
the infinite unseen. Working the works of Him that 
sent him, stating and unfolding his truths, shaping 
conduct always into glad and facile subservience to 
the divine will, he who had really seen him had seen 



1 8 WHAT SUFFICETH ? 

the Father, had seen his power manifest in the works 
done, his love in the tender forbearance, sympathy, 
and forgiveness shown, his truth in the wonderful 
and gracious words that had fallen from lips anointed 
only with truth ; and by these three, work, word, and 
life, had made such manifestation of the Great One 
as no vision of mere person could ever have given. 
It is not seeing the person that makes us realize his 
character, his relation to us, him. The world had 
never been wiser or better, had the form of Jesus 
been the veritable showing of the person of God. The 
world is better for its assurance that in these things 
Jesus showed, manifested, reflected that of God which 
the soul most craves to know, what he is, and how 
he feels toward us. The bewildered Philip still asked 
for the showing of the person. But that would not 
have sufficed, though he thought so. He who could 
not see the Father in the Son would have got only the 
lowest, the most transient impression, had the Great 
Being vouchsafed to stand before him in all the incon- 
ceivable majesty of his glory. 

What I want to say to-day is that, while the teaching, 
the sufficiency of the gospel, is the grand doctrine of 
the divine Fatherhood, — and blessed forevermore be 
our God and Father because it is so ! — we must school 
ourselves to recognize that it is also its limitation. As 
we grow into other knowledges, we must not consent to 
outlaw God from them, and feel that only in the Bible 
does he speak, only by revelation is he revealed. The 
Bible does but a partial work; and, when you have 
exhausted it, a great deal is left unknown. Whole 
invaluable provinces of thought-knowledge are left un- 



WHAT SUFFICETH ? 



19 



touched. God is the great Economist, and he teaches 
but one thing at a time. The nail he drives is driven 
home and clinched before he strikes another. That is 
one reason why his work stands. To Jesus was dele- 
gated the grandest duty ever intrusted to man. Other 
men had been, have been sent for other things, — each 
for his work. This was his. And no man can say but 
he has done it utterly. We have nothing more to ask 
in that direction, however inquisitive or impatient in 
others. It suffices. The showing of the Father is 
complete, — perfect after its kind. But it does not 
exhaust God. It does not suffice us as seekers after 
God. . The gospel showing of God as the Father is 
not sufficient to meet the wants of the man of civiliza- 
tion, culture, faith, who cannot be satisfied with words 
or facts shut up in . a book, but burns to know the all 
possible about him. The gospel does not put him 
before us as the all that he is. It does not give all of 
him we may know, and shall be happier and better for 
knowing. God is something beside Father, — may we 
not say better than Father ? And we must learn to 
see that, and be brave to speak it, and accept and wel- 
come every investigation of human thought, not fear- 
ful lest it weaken the hold and lead away from reve- 
lation, but rejoicing in anything that, by broadening 
our conceptions of an infinite knowledge and power, 
shall lead us up to a thought we can by no possibility 
reach when God stands before us only in the parental 
attitude. 

God is something other than a Father. Grand and 
elevating 'as that conception is, it meets and satisfies 
the religious sentiment; but there is something — a. 



20 



WHAT SUFFICETH ? 



vast, vast deal — that it does not cover, does not meet 
and satisfy ; and ministers in their preaching, as men 
in their lives, miss it that they do not confess it. 
When the man of clear brain and devout heart stands 
by you and shows you the evidence of the divine 
reason and handiwork in every minutest tracery of the 
human frame, in what the microscope reveals, as in 
what the telescope unveils, and goes step by step 
before you, leading your groping way among the winds 
and leads of the divine thought and purpose, while 
with every advance you feel yourself consciously ap- 
proaching the centre and source, it comes with great 
force to you that there is really something of most 
moment to our best conception of the Infinite which 
our gospel leaves out, and that man must have the 
co-ordinate testimony and revealing of many-handed, 
many-voiced nature, before he can really hold an any 
way adequate idea of God. 

When I am thinking of and trying to comprehend 
the Eternal and Infinite One, I cannot, with Philip, 
say, "Shew me the Father, and it sufficeth." What I 
want to be shown is God, — God not in any limited 
relation, though it be the highest, but God in his whole- 
ness, whatever and all of him, not too high for me to 
attain to, — God in mind, in matter, in space, in time ; 
God under all aspects as under one aspect. Why 
should Christian teaching seek to rule him out of 
these ? What are mind, matter, what have they done 
that they may not interpret him, that they must be 
alien ? They know and tell what Gospels do not, 
cannot. It does not suffice me to know God is my 
Father, though you bring me, to help out and empha- 



WHAT SUFFICETH ? 



21 



size the gospel word, the everything of every human 
tongue or pen or brain which has sought to express 
the wonder and the happiness and the condescension 
of that connection. There is something that, more and 
more as I grow into experience and knowledge, I feel is 
to be said of him, known of him, and must be said and 
known, which it is not in the power of gospel word to 
disclose or the strictly parental idea to embrace, which 
can only be disclosed as the humble, teachable, rev- 
erent soul draws toward and finds the God everywhere 
immanent. 

If God be only Father, if that be all there is to such 
a Being, the showing of Jesus is sufficient : I would be 
content. But when I find that my teacher himself did 
not confine his thought or teaching exclusively to that ; 
when I find him, through the lily and the grass and the 
sparrow and the mustard-seed, leading me to see a 
great working Providence, teaching me to look for and 
find tokens of him in spheres outside his parental rela- 
tion, and in those an added grace and power and 
dearness ; when I find that Jesus evidently fed and 
refreshed his faith by converse with the Great Spirit of 
Nature, that he himself held relations and received 
instruction in other than the sharply restricted filial 
way ; when I find him going back to the old-time his- 
tory and recognizing the Jehovah power of rule and 
law and restraint as part and parcel of the great one 
purpose, — I can but say that God is more, and I want 
to know the more of God, not only for the knowledge' 
sake, not only for the knowing him, but that my idea 
of him as Father may be fed and broadened and inten- 
sified, become glowing and transfusing. I know him 



22 



WHAT SUFFICETH ? 



more, I love him better, my conception is grander for 
the things I know of him that cannot be embraced 
within the narrow compass of the one tie. To me 
always there has seemed as the type of a satisfied faith 
the good old New England grandmother living in her 
small way on some back road of some unknown vil- 
lage, laying her Bible aside at the setting of the Sun- 
day's sun with her spectacles in it for the next week's 
mark, in the utter and blissful confidence that every 
minutest word of the book was written by the very 
finger of God, and came down out of heaven to man. 
And yet there is a sublime faith and a more restful 
assurance and a more solemn thought of the Great 
One as one makes him out to be the informing life of 
all that is. When I follow the keenest analysis down 
to the ultimate, — to " organisms without organs," the 
simplest of all observed, the simplest of all imaginable 
organism, so simple as a little lump of an albuminous 
combination of carbon, the ultimate that human re- 
search gives us as the origin and cause of life, — and 
there I find the bars up, and the awful word creeping 
upon me, " And what next ?" and the as awful answer 
out of infinite distances and infinite silences, — God ; 
when I take history, and, all the way down among the 
affairs of men, I trace a something that is not man, or 
current of time, or drift of event, but a power somehow 
setting aside and overruling, balancing and compensat- 
ing, lifting ages and races, and advancing against all 
retrogrades the harmonies of humanity, making of the 
confusions of man, as once of the chaos of matter, 
order and beauty and growth and success and life ; 
when I get the last word of philosophy, the farthest 



WHAT SUFFICETH ? 



23 



bound of reason, and over the waste and desolate and 
unfathomable beyond, as next thing possible, comes the 
assurance, God; — why, I am wholly a grander man. 
I have got a grander faith, my God is more than my 
Father, and my Father seems all the more adorable, 
because, besides his loving care for little me, and the 
myriads beside me who are little, besides his mercy 
and his forgiving, he is all this, — all this to other 
things, and my Father, too. It does not take a bit 
from the Scripture revealing, but it adds immeasurable 
things to it ; and I may stand beside the ignorant and 
confiding grandmother, and feel that though she be 
spared many dark moments and grave questionings, 
yet that mine is, after all, the faith, and I in triumph 
can look around me and above, and in proud yet 
humble trust exclaim, " These are thy glorious works, 
Parent of good." " My Father made them all." 

You have only to bring this home to yourself by 
asking, " In what way do I really get the completest 
idea of my earthly father? " " By regarding him solely 
in that relation or by trying to know all about him in 
his various relations, — his connection with other men 
and things." 

For myself, I know this : that I take my all of 
memory of my father in all his love and care for me, — 
in companionship, in affection, in discipline, in advice, 
in example, — the everything that in the tie of blood 
and the relations of intercourse involved the parental 
connection, and, when I have exhausted all, it comes 
to me that, dear as he was, — completely my father, — 
that relation did not exhaust him. There was ever so 
much more that he was ; and when I know what others 



24 



WHAT SUFFICETH ? 



have to say among whom he moved in duties, labors, 
sympathies outside the more narrow, if most sacred, 
precincts of home, he is in every way an exalted being. 
It is not the mere fatherly that I know, but the so 
much that cannot be included in that idea at its high- 
est. I turn that thought, that experience, Godward. 
A good being has come to earth, and virtually said : 
" Men have been mistaken all along. There is but one 
God, and that God is not the jealous and vindictive 
king, the hard, unreasonable, selfish Jehovah that my 
own countrymen have conceived ; but he is a Father, 
— my Father, their Father. And that I am come to 
teach." And the followers of the good Teacher, taking 
him up more narrowly than he had purposed, have 
made it the aim of their teaching to impress upon men 
what they conceived the Bible to tell, many of them 
clinging to the Old Testament idea, while using the 
New Testament language, letting Old Testament spirit 
pervade it, and saying " Father" when they only saw 
and feared the " king." And it has been a wrong, a 
danger, and a crime, to think of him elsehow or else- 
where, to work for any other feature or attribute or 
revealing, except along the line of Scripture phrase. 
Men have scowled upon and forbade any foray into 
the great realm of Nature so vocal of God to Jesus, 
and have trembled lest somehow it should be dis- 
covered that there was some contradiction between 
what he had said in his creation and what he had said 
by his Christ. They have compelled the human soul 
to look at God only under a single aspect, and in con- 
sequence, to our Christian faith, to our Christian con- 
ception of God, everything is wanting but that which 



WHAT SUFFICETH ? 



2$ 



has a special Bible sanction ; and we have one whom 
we call by the very sublimest names, of the greater part 
of whose sublimity we keep ourselves wilfully ignorant, 
who, as merely the Father, is almost as much wronged 
as by being merely Jehovah. 

It is the very dearest, brightest, happiest thought 
that the Great Infinite holds this parental relation to 
me, that I am his child ; but more and more, as I go, 
I know — as I know it of my earthly father — that it 
is impossible to shut the whole of God within that 
relationship ; and that, wherever else you find him, 
and whatever else you may have to say about him, 
instead of veiling or confusing that first grand idea, 
it only sheds a purer lustre about it. It is not the 
Father minus anything, but it is the Father plus some- 
thing, when the heavens add their declaration, and the 
firmament shows his handiwork, and day unto day and 
night unto night, through every part of his boundless 
dominion, bear witness, not to his design, his work 
alone, but to what is infinitely beyond and quite other, 
— to Himself. 

And it seems to me that the privilege of this later 
day is that, in so much deeper and grander way than 
the poet knew when he wrote it, we may look 
"through Nature up to Nature's God," — not Nature's 
God merely, our God, nay, our "Father" ; may come to 
see that the things of her domain are not the work- 
manship of mere power, wisdom, will, but that they 
all carry with them the subtler element of love, knit 
themselves back to that same one whom Jesus called 
Father. And if so be this fair universe of things has 
not its ultimate in our human prosperities, delights, 



26 



WHAT SUFFICETH ? 



and elevation, if the great purpose be beyond and 
other than for these inhabitants of earth and time, as 
may well be in such vast concerns as God's, still are 
we sharers in it all, helped by it all, elevated through it 
all, and by all brought into the innermost presence. 
It is that we want, whatever will so enlarge the vision 
of our souls as to bring God out of distance into pres- 
ence ; and what can more do it than the reverent 
teaching of the imprints he has ever left along every 
way that his spirit has passed, so that the ardent 
seeker, striking into unknown discoveries, may stray 
nowhere but he shall see that God has been there 
before him, and if God, then — power, reason, wisdom, 
will, love, the Father. It is one thing to grasp the 
idea that God made and holds all, and another that 
all that God made and holds repeat and confirm the 
truth that the Father did all this as he did the works 
by which he was manifest through Jesus. The inter- 
weaving of that thought with all that is is that which 
best interprets him. I never touch Nature anywhere. 
I never hear the word that wise seekers bring out of 
silences and distances, out of secret microscopic or tel- 
escopic lurking-places, that I do not feel how many are 
the unnoticed messengers and ministries awaiting us, 
and how mistaken we are who go deaf and blind 
through this vast museum, like the dead soul of Peter 
Bell. 

" A primrose by the river's brim 
A yellow primrose was to him, 
And it was nothing more." 

Oh that we might see the primrose, as Jesus saw 
the lily, — the messenger, the interpreter, the child of 



WHAT SUFFICETH ? 



27 



the one Great Spirit, over all, and through all, and 
in all ! Oh that we might catch the harmonies that 
pulse through all things, chanting their consenting 
ascription of glory and honor and dominion and 
majesty to the one creating and ruling Wisdom, till 
man should feel that through every star, through every 
grass-blade, as through every living soul, " the glory of 
a present God still beams," that God, the God and 
Father of all things as of Jesus Christ, our Lord, of 
whom, from whom, in whom are we all. 



III. 



DAY UNTO DAY. 

" Day unto day uttereth speech." — Psalms. 

Every yesterday is talking to, instructing, to-day. 
Every to-day has its word for the morrow. So each 
individual life progresses, so ages ripen. It is not 
what is new-born. Born to-day, — that is our hope, our 
power, our weakness, or our defeat. We live in and 
because of yesterdays. Their life enters into ours. 
They are our nurses, our instructors. They have had 
us by the hand, led us step by step, little by little 
unfolding to us the work before, and giving little by 
little the helps unto its accomplishment. In nothing 
is the law of sequence more inevitable. In nothing 
does that which is more depend upon that which was. 
In nothing does the next step more directly hinge 
upon the last. Not only yesterday speaks to to-day, 
but what yesterday says decides what to-day is. He 
lives well and wisely who has the speech of each day 
as it goes, who hears and heeds the voice it utters ; 
who lifts himself not into a far, indefinite future, but 
into the future of to-morrow, not by the vague teach- 
ings of a remote past, but by the last word of the last 
day in which he lived, by the things said to himself in 
his own experience and consciousness, not by things 
said to others under other conditions and to other 



DAY UNTO DAY. 



2 9 



ends. It was a very sublime truth uttered by the 
Psalmist, but he did not know half its meaning. 
With some old memory of his shepherd life (if David 
wrote it) or some fresh glimpsing of the skies whose 
twinkling hosts we so seldom think of, his thought 
turned toward the handiwork of God ; and his language, 
simple, brief, grand, has gone to the uttermost parts of 
the earth, — a wondrous expression of that which no 
finite mind can ever fully gather in, or any finite spirit 
utter. No mere words so completely fill us with the 
awed sense of the Infinite as these : " The heavens 
declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth 
his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and 
night unto night showeth knowledge." Once stand- 
ing under midnight skies and looking through the 
telescope, as the star I was gazing at passed out of 
the field of vision and left me looking into deep, dark, 
empty space, I for an instant caught a feeling akin to 
that which these words suggest. It is only at rare 
moments — moments like angels' visits — that we find 
ourselves lifted to any conception of the immense and 
infinite, — now and then upon a Mount of Vision, most 
of the time spent down among the things that hardly 
go out before prayer and patience and faith and toil. 

I suppose that it was of God that the Psalmist first * 
thought when he said, "Day unto day uttereth speech." 
In great nearness, he tried to hold himself to that 
Being from whom we keep so far. Had he really kept 
himself as near as his word would seem, great peace 
he must have had ; for it is that that the sense of the 
divine nearness greatly gives in life's tumults and 
straits. But it was with him just as it is with us, 



30 



DAY UNTO DAY. 



Here is the language of his better mood, his sense of 
inferiority and dependence, his sense of reverence and 
trust. His speech was better than his life, his emotion 
loftier than his conduct, what he knew better than 
what he did, — not because of anything hypocritical in 
him, as not in us, but because of that flagging service 
with which we follow up in life what really lies as 
corner-stone to our conviction, — yes, to our desire and 
attempt. Just that same surging, desperate battle 
which any of us of any moral vitality knows that he 
keeps up sometimes so despairingly between his better 
and his baser self, with ever-alternating victory, he 
waged, now calm with success, now desperate with 
defeat. I think we all love God better than we serve 
him, and it is just so always with our affections. The 
love outruns, underruns the needs, especially when the 
object of the love is above us and demands of us ser- 
vice. Day unto day uttereth speech unto us of God, 
from the moment that we wake. Like Old Mortality, 
it busies itself with sharpening the fading impressions 
of yesterday, or it gives new witness in its new event. 
Our daily waking, each day's girding for each day's 
combat, the renewal of affections, temptations, and 
labors, — the whole minutiae of life's intercourse and 
machinery, — these, as well as Nature, with her sights 
and sounds, are daily utterances of God. They are wit- 
nesses to, interpreters of God. No matter what else we 
say or think, — last, first, always, — it is of God these 
speak. If you have any thought at all, you cannot 
dissociate them from him. In him, by him, because 
of him, we and they live, move, and have our being. 
Just now, day unto day utters speech in these rapid 



DAY UNTO DAY. 



31 



changes which flash themselves before our eyes, — this 
fresh verdure, these spring blossoms, this glorious gar- 
niture Nature has flung so lavishly over hill, field, and 
wood, this rare beauty newly written in upon the face 
of the earth in grass and grain and flower, in songs of 
birds and lingering twilights, in deep thunders and 
gushing showers, in breezes that make breathing a 
luxury and living a delight. Day unto day is telling 
the story of the new hour, and God's infinity of love 
in it. The Lenten season of winter is over, and the 
Easter of Nature calls from their graves to the beauty 
of new lives the grains of seed, the germs of life that 
had seemed to die ; and with each new outburst up 
from silent lips go hallelujahs that chime with all 
Nature's chorus, " God is good." Go out into the coun- 
try to this magnificent array of varied beauty in which 
God has lapped our city, out where the earth is telling 
the resource as the glory of our God, — go, blind sons 
and daughters of an Infinite Love, and see and hear 
and read and comprehend the story day uttereth unto 
day, away from noises and jars, works and ways and 
strifes and envies of man, — see what God is doing with 
busy love from morn till eve, in fields and lanes and 
woods that stretch themselves everywhere, that woo 
and coax with sight and sound, and where nothing 
stands between the soul and the divine creating hand. 
The great temple of Nature stands daily open, and, 
with enticings no art can have, waits to welcome and 
reward, to soothe and elevate, to tempt to the worship 
no mammon temple wakes. Beautiful for situation was 
Mount Zion, but round about Jerusalem the guardian 
mountains did not stand in such calm and varied 



32 



DAY UNTO DAY. 



beauty as these hills about this city with the rich inter- 
vales between. Throw off the harness of your daily 
lives, get from beneath the hammer that beats the life 
from out your souls. Go to the smiles of our great 
Mother Earth, and up from them look for the smile of 
our great Father, — God, — and the dull thud of your 
sluggish pulse will bound with new life, the encrusting 
scales will drop from your eyes, and you will see, not 
flower and sky, not beauty and summer, but the great 
immanent spirit of them all, — Him in whom you, as 
they, live, move, and have your being. 

Not in the country only, and at one season, does day 
unto day speak of God, but there are voices of the 
city, louder than its hum, that man may always hear, 
must sometimes heed. God is not only resident out- 
side of city limits, an omnipotent gardener replenish- 
ing the earth, but just as much present and just as 
loudly speaking and just as clearly spoken of where 
the weary vessel chafes her sides against the dock, or 
the clatter of machinery or the concussions of trade 
make what men call life. Only you heed it ! Daily 
life and daily detail proclaim Him by whose law and in 
whose sight all things revolve, whose infinite issues in 
blindness these work out. Strangely into the clash 
and selfishness of business and intercourse the day 
intrudes with its speech of God, its various lesson ; and 
man finds himself compelled to learn of high things 
while grovelling amid the garbage of life. Sickness, 
misfortune, sin, poverty, gaunt in rags, with hollow 
voice and eye, waylay his step or besiege his business 
hour, demand for sympathy and charity breaks in upon 
the anxious fret, and calls him back to the humanity he 



DAY UNTO DAY. 



33 



is tempted to forget, brightens and strengthens the 
great brother tie. Only let him heed what the busy 
press and busier telegraph bring him of the great har- 
vest of events, adventure, discovery, progress, — only 
let the great, ever-growing record speak, not of facts 
alone, but the author of them, as they all do, just as 
much as lily or star, — and man would find that under- 
neath the sordid cares of commerce, and overlying the 
intricacies of traffic, outspeaking from daily jar and 
jargon, is a divine name, influence, presence, as 
mighty to effect its purposes as the glowing life of 
sunset or of autumn. There is no hiding of God in 
cities, though men may hide from him. He walks the 
streets as the fields. The day is vocal of him every- 
where. Day unto day uttereth its speech. 

Day unto day uttereth speech of ourselves. We live 
by days. They are the leaves folded back each night 
in the great volume that we write. They are our auto- 
biography. Each day takes us not newly, but as a tale 
continued. It finds us what yesterday left us. It 
works with us by yesterday's report. It has the draw- 
backs as the experiences of yesterday, — the good and 
the bad, — and with these sets itself at the new task of 
to-day. And, as we go on, every day is telling to 
every other day truths about us, showing the kind of 
being that is handed on to it, making of us something 
better or something worse, as we decide. It tells us if 
we have kept our temper, our resolves, our faith, if we 
have been selfish or self-denying : it tells the rule by 
which we walk, and how really we are growing into the 
lineaments of Christ. 

The day's whisper to the next day, as it dismisses 



34 



DAY UNTO DAY. 



us, is that it will find us very remiss in this command, 
in the following of which only are the harmony and 
success of life. 

I remember that I used to think, as I suppose many 
still do half consciously, when everything had gone 
wrong with me, and the day's record was black with 
dissatisfaction, as it still so generally is, that, only could 
I get to sleep, that day's record would be closed and 
out of the way, and to-morrow I could begin with a 
clean sheet for a new trial. Sleep I used to think the 
same sort of sponge that some men conceive forgive- 
ness to be, — the eradicator of the ineradicable facts 
of experience, and each day not the continuing of an 
old life, but the beginning again. So partially it is, 
new chances with new courage, while it is yet the 
outgo of the day gone, as the link in the ship's chain 
that slips your finger is the outcome of the link before. 
Many links, one chain. 

It is a very weary heart as well as head that man 
lays away at night, and oblivion for the one as much as 
sleep for the other is his craving. His life-longing is 
to begin again, and yet again, to get away from these 
inexorable yesterdays, which cling to us in our strug- 
gles, and will not off. We cannot do it. Into the web 
of life they go, figure and color receding as the busy 
loom of time works in others, — get rolled on the great 
roll that with every diurnal revolution grows. Just as 
the swift runners amid the Highlands handed the same 
torch to the next, and it was borne on from hand to 
hand, from stage to stage, till its work was done, so 
day to day hands us on, each taking up the same life 
the other laid down, each with rapid stroke shaping 



DAY UNTO DAY. 



35 



us a little, and with its added labor passing us on to 
the next, the new not effacing the old. However it 
may change color and figure of the future, however 
these may blend in future harmony or scatter wilder 
confusion, we do not lay aside life, only continue it. 

Our one chance is improvement, not oblivion, — not 
that the past days shall forget or deny their record, 
but that the coming shall have better things to utter. 

Not only of what has been does day unto day utter 
speech, but more sadly sometimes — might I not say 
always ? — what might have been. 

It is not the £<?;/zmission that haunts memory so 
fiercely as the emission, — omission that seems so tri- 
fling and venial as we yield to the moment's enticing, 
which looms so big itself and with such giant shadow 
to our backward looking. What I have done is bad 
enough ; but what is unwritten that ought to be on 
life's record, what I had no business to leave out, what 
I have left z/^done it is that runs up a long and 
heavy column in the account. Day unto day uttereth 
speech of it, — little additions rolling on in ever-swell- 
ing volume, as the spring-tide comes rising, rising, till 
it submerges so much that is fair in life. 

I need no other reminder than my memory ; and, as 
I glance along the days, and sadly see that I "might 
have been" a man of so much juster proportions, so 
much fuller in all the faculty that makes manhood, 
with so much more even pace might have run my race, 
achieved so much more for man and for God, "might 
have been" so much more honest, persevering, indus- 
trious, bold, pure, true, unselfish, gentle, and obedient, 
so much better in every relation, manward, selfward, 
Godward ! 



36 



DAY UNTO DAY. 



The old days tell the new days this, and the new 
days find how toughened I am in the old depraved 
habits and thoughts. I mourn over what might have 
been : they cannot raise in me the courage yet to be 
that I wish I had been and shall yet more wish. ' 

O friends, do not let us lapse into the drift that takes 
us away from hope as we near the goal, do not let us 
have these pitiful tales of day unto day as our only 
record, but let us rouse and nerve ourselves ; and, 
whatever the sum of yesterdays, let us make the sum 
of to-morrows brighter, nobler, holier, the time past 
enough for mistake and folly, shame and sin, while 
future days shall utter unto future days a better tale 
and show a clearer course. 

" Build to-day, then, strong and sure, 

With a firm and ample base; 
Thus ascending and secure 

Shall to-morrow find its place. 
For the structure that we raise, 

Time is with material filled : 
Our to-days and yesterdays 

Are the blocks with which we build." 

June 15, 1873. 



IV. 



EASTER. 

"And I know not where they have laid him." — John xx., 13. 

One never quite satisfactorily arranges the sequences 
of the story of that resurrection morning. The sepa- 
rate gospel accounts are brief and unsatisfactory. 
When collated, there are gaps not to be closed, and 
contradictions not to be reconciled. The fragments 
of narrative, the separate interviews, the independent 
witnesses, can by no human ingenuity be woven into 
one complete, continuous account. 

After the exciting scenes of the crucifixion, a few 
devoted friends — from among whom the disciples are 
conspicuously absent — get the body of Jesus, and lay 
it in the tomb, but are hurried from an incompleted 
service by the setting sun, which ushered in the Sab- 
bath, on which no manner of work could be done, 
especially as that Sabbath, by Mosaic ordinance, was 
a high day. The little party of men and women retire. 
We do not hear of the men again. The future story, 
so far as that first party is concerned, is confined to 
the women of it. And, of these women, she who most 
interests us, to whom Jesus seems to have shown 
special attention, who most tenaciously clung to him, 
is Mary Magdalene; and, if seven devils once went 
out of her, surely seven saints must have then pos- 
sessed her. 



38 



EASTER. 



She was at the burial, she saw the place where her 
master was laid ; and that so sacred body had, no doubt, 
been composed to its last rest by her tender and loving 
touch. She drew back and went away, one bright 
thought only in her heart to support her slowly reced- 
ing step, that she should once again see that so loved 
face, when early on the morning of the first day of the 
week she should come to finish her incompleted task. 
In the lone company of her heavy heart, wearily she 
waited at home till the Sabbath day was gone; and 
then as the prophetic dawn hinted of coming day, 
before the sun was up, "while it was yet dark," bearing 
sweet spices, she started on her sacred errand. 

As she went, she thought of the great stone that had 
been rolled against the mouth of the cave. Who should 
roll it away ? But it was rolled away already. The 
tomb was empty. Startled, she fled toward the city, 
and met the more tardily coming disciples. Her words 
are the first annunciation of that morning, " They have 
taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we 
know not where they have laid him." She turns back 
with them, and stands by the tomb, alone, silent, weep- 
ing, when a voice addresses her, " Why weepest thou?" 
And again it is, " Because they have taken away my 
Lord, and I know not where they have laid him." And 
then, as the angel leaves her, a form is before her which 
her dim eyes suppose to be that of the gardener, and 
to him she pours out anew the one agonizing thought, 
exquisite with the pathos and eloquence of despair: 
" Oh, sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where 
thou hast laid him, and I will take him away." How 
dirge-like this repeated refrain, that solemn, sad, wail- 



EASTER. 



39 



ing cry, wild and weird, " I know not where they have 
laid him." 

They had not laid him anywhere, — disciple, gar- 
dener, angel. There had been nothing of that which 
the Pharisees pretended to fear. Of all men, the dis- 
ciples the least capable of that act. They were too 
stupefied for that. There had been nothing of that 
which Mary may have vaguely suspected, — that his 
enemies had stolen him away. No enemy had done it. 
Nor had angels. Nor had man. When, how, no man 
knows ; but 

" The rock-barred door 
Is opened wide, and the great prisoner gone." 

The rites of sepulture never were concluded ; and the 
swift word passed from lip to lip of friend, it reached 
the ear of foe, it spread the wide world round, — 

" He is risen ! he is risen ! 
Tell it with a joyful voice. 
He has burst his three days' prison, 
Let the whole wide earth rejoice 1 " 

Jesus was not to pass to dust in the long, unrelieved 
silence and quiet of that hillside garden. It was death 
that died there ; and Jesus lived. 

Of all the days in the Christian's calendar, this 
should be the gladdest and the welcomest. A feast 
kept with sincerity and truth and one loud song of 
exuberant joy, echoing and re-echoing from pole to 
pole, and swelling in every soul, should usher in and 
greet 

" This welcome morn 
Which scatters blessings on its wings 
To nations unborn." 



40 



EASTER. 



Could we only in simplicity and sincerity adopt the 
morning salutation of the Greek Church, — "The Lord 
is risen," — greeting friends and neighbors so, as on 
Christmas and New Year's morning we exchange our 
salutations, it would do much toward handing on freshly 
the gladness which should fill every heart at the return 
of this peculiar anniversary. But we may say it to our- 
selves, and be glad. 

I have never been so impressed with the joyousness 
that ought to characterize this festival — that naturally 
would, if we really felt its meaning — as in reading 
many Easter hymns of late, and hearing the children 
rehearse their Easter carols. There is a certain senti- 
ment that we talk about at times, and at times let lie 
half-dead, which characterizes a good deal our feeling 
about an anniversary which a real, deep, keen faith 
would vivify and pour out in spontaneous joy. For do 
we not celebrate the giving of the greatest love to man ? 
Not the coming of Christ so blesses as does that going 
of his, which took with it the remnants of shadow and 
gloom, and filled the anxious heart of man with sweet, 
divine assurance. Say what you will about the wit- 
ness, question and demur and declare the proof inade- 
quate and the recorded fact a mistake, and bring science 
to deny the possibility of statements which have been 
the glad credence of the generations, somehow there 
is a fact that one cannot get behind, — that, dating 
from that time and day, an unprepared and reluctant 
people began to accept a marvelous truth, which be- 
came, in the enthusiastic hands of Paul, the mighty 
power with which old faiths were subverted and the 
one new established. For himself, his confidence in 



EASTER. 



41 



the story of the resurrection, made him impatient 
of the clogs and conditions of the flesh, soothed his 
troubles and his wounds, and made light his dangers, 
and forced him on, dauntless, in a career which had 
not one earthly hope and every earthly loss. As Jesus 
was transfigured while speaking of the decease he was 
to accomplish at Jerusalem, so is Paul transfigured as 
he speaks of that accomplished decease and the bright 
morrow that broke through its horrors and flooded a 
world with its quenchless light. In the cross of Christ 
he glories, but it is the resurrection that makes his joy. 
No happier man in all history than he, as he pours out 
his ardent soul in joyful adoration, and tells of the 
blunted sting of death and the victor crown torn from 
the now uncrowned tyrant. And what a story is it 
to which the dim, dumb corridors under old Rome bear 
witness, that home of death vocal with hymn and hope 
and emblem, that up from dead centuries brings, 
through its dusty halls, the glad, triumphant convic- 
tions of those who laid their dead there ! Since then, 
the host of high and low, old and young, great and 
small, wise and ignorant, who have gone ; who have 
mourned, not as those who had no hope, but as those 
in whom hope was as open vision, and faith the great 
comforter ! Well to ring in the Christmas tide, to 
greet its coming from steeple and from lip, with carol, 
gift, and gladness ! Well that the whole heart should 
rejoice because to us is born a Saviour! And, surely, 
equally well, equally to be welcomed with glad acclaim, 
with happy voice and joyous song, the Easter day, 
which sheds its light over a world lying in darkness 
while Jesus walked with man, taking on brightness 
only when Jesus passed away. 



42 



EASTER. 



How shall we keep this holy day of gladness, 
This queen of days, that bitter, hopeless sadness 

Forever drives away ? 
The night is past, its sleep and its forgetting : 
Our risen sun, no more forever setting, 

Pours everlasting day. 

Let us not bring, upon this joyful morning, 
Dead myrrh and spices for our Lord's adorning, 

Nor any lifeless thing. 
Our gifts shall be the fragrance and the splendor 
Of living flowers, in breathing beauty tender, 

The glory of our spring. 

And with the myrrh, oh ! put away the leaven 
Of malice, hatred, injuries unforgiven, 

And cold and lifeless form : 
Still with the lilies deeds of mercy bringing, 
And fervent prayers, and praises upward springing, 

And hopes, pure, bright, and warm. 

So shall this Easter shed a fragrant beauty 
O'er many a day of dull and cheerless duty, 

And light thy wintry way, 
Till rest is won, and Patience, smiling faintly, 
Upon thy breast shall lay her lilies saintly, 

To hail heaven's Easter day. 

The Mary question — which she, in the darkness of 
the morning and the darkness of her heart, put with 
such persistent perplexity — is a question that virtually 
many times comes to the thinking man, quite as much 
perplexed, quite as much in the dark as she. All 
about us, everywhere, words and professions, and call- 
ing upon Jesus, churches, societies, charities, hospitals, 
phrases a man must accept, dogmas he must believe, 
creeds he must subscribe to, forms, processes he must 
go through, a crowd, a host of things labelled Chris- 



EASTER. 



43 



tian, — but the Christ, where have they laid him? 
Here is the civilized world, holding as the apple of its 
eye a venerated institution ; and here are customs, laws, 
habits of people and of individuals, and they all bear 
a Christian name and purport to come of him, to be 
because of him. There are many valuable, admirable 
things about these, mingled with much that is no 
way desirable; but, even in their best expression, the 
marvel is that they should be considered Christian, 
that they should claim Christly origin and sanction, 
so little of the Christ is in them. Where have they 
laid the Christ ? we say. A very successful, well- 
regulated Church, feasts, fasts, rites, ceremonies, occa- 
sions punctiliously looked after, a right administration 
of service, a broad allegiance of people, a wide-spread 
interest and power, — but the Christ, where have they 
laid the Christ ? These might be attributes of, attend- 
ants upon, a well-regulated heathenism : they might be 
dicta of a philosophy, the expedients of a police, the 
morality of a well-ordered society, the sanction of 
honored custom, — any of a thousand motives might 
account for, uphold these. There is no Christ flavor 
to them. They bear his name ; but where have they 
laid him? Where, in these, his unmistakable spirit? 
Jesus is not an embalmed body laid away in a Judean 
grave centuries ago, but Jesus is a living spirit, source 
and centre of a faith that lives ; but where have these 
which have stolen his name, which do work as under 
his sanction and as by his help, laid that spirit which 
is to be the world's deliverance, without whose leaven- 
ing presence all must go for nought? It is his own 
word that it is useless to cry, Lord, Lord ! or to claim 



44 



EASTER. 



to do mighty deeds in his name ; and an apostle puts 
fresh emphasis upon it by declaring that no man, and 
no man's work, except it have his spirit, can be his. 
Where that is wanting, it is the madness of the mad- 
dest folly to claim to be his. 

He is no patriot, how loud soever his profession, how 
plausible soever his seeming, in whom the very spirit 
which makes the patriot is evidently wanting : he is 
no republican, he is no democrat, he is no hard-money 
man, whose spirit lacks the very elements that go to 
make him one or the other. He is no Swedenhorgian 
who ignores the influence, the spirit of Swedenborg ; 
and why should that man be Christian, or that thing 
be Christian, which is conspicuous and notable for the 
absence of that which makes the Christian ? The in- 
forming, inspiring spirit of a thing is that by which 
it is to be alone known. You may call something a 
rose to all eternity, but, if it have not that informing, 
inspiring something which makes a rose, an eternity 
of calling can't make it one ; and you may call church, 
sect, man Christian up to the last " syllable of recorded 
time," but if church, sect, man, be not informed, in- 
spired by that spirit which makes, which is, the Christ, 
the calling is vain. It comes back as empty as the 
echo that shouts at you behind the mountain, — noth- 
ing but a sound, the rebound only of air. We talk of 
nominal Christians. There can be no such thing. An 
echo is a nominal voice ; but it is nothing, baseless, 
bodiless, substanceless, the shadow of a sound. To be 
nominally Christian is to be Christian not at all, is to 
be empty of Jesus as Mary found the tomb to be, is 
to mistake the tomb for Jesus, the dead place where 



EASTER. 



45 



he had lain for the living force which already he was 
become. When Jesus had been taken away, it would 
have taken more than an angel to prove that he was 
there. 

Only man attempts such legerdemain, and would 
have us believe that a cerement is a body, and the 
napkin and the linen clothes the living man, and the 
empty place quick with the throb and quiver of a beat- 
ing heart. It is only man that takes a semblance for 
a reality, a shadow for a substance, who undertakes to 
lay away the spirit of Jesus, and yet pretends to have 
and hold it. 

I have briefly to answer the Mary question by say- 
ing, We have laid him in the past. He is an embalmed 
memory rather than a living influence ; he is a fact in 
history, not a present spirit ; a man whom claiming 
to know is honor to ourselves, not proof of faithful 
service. We have laid him under catechism and creed, 
decrees, substitutions, and religious form and formula 
and custom, — buried him under these, not as one buries 
a corner-stone, that it may be the solid thing upon which 
the substantial edifice shall rise, but buried him as we 
bury things that we want to keep out of sight, and 
mean shall stay dead. We have been satisfied with 
the conjuring power of his name, and by its spell have 
attempted to work. We have let our idea of respecta- 
bility, the customs of society, the proprieties of inter- 
course, the distinctions of class, and all the shifting 
and shallow expediencies overlay him, and established 
the sanctions of a reputable selfishness, tinctured with 
just a flavor of his name, — the low average of opinion 
of the low average of men, — into the place which is 



46 



EASTER. 



alone of right his, till his influence is as dead in these 
as was his body when Pilate's myrmidons thrust the 
spear into his side. It is not undue exaggeration to 
say that, saturated with what is called a nominal Chris- 
tianity, the things that pertain to life are empty of that 
spirit which is specifically his, and that to attempt to 
press the law of that spirit upon Christendom would 
be to shake it to its foundation. And that is a shak- 
ing Christendom needs, and must yet have. 

For a moment look at what we call manhood. The 
cynic Diogenes lighted his lantern, and said he was 
searching for a man ; Plato, banished to Syracuse, told 
the tyrant that he had come to the island to find a virt 
uous man. Christ came not to search for, but to 
make. He came not in the majesty of a God, but in 
the beauty of personal holiness, — the model, the ex- 
ample of what the men of different philosophies were 
seeking, what the many wanted to find, to be. In 
all the way of life, he stands before us. Whatever 
we want to get at regarding it, he supplies us with. 
We have only to refer back to him, and the principles 
as the conduct of every-day existence become manifest. 
We no longer walk in the dark and stumble, but it is 
light all about us, and we are erect. Principles, pre- 
cepts, injunctions, not mere matters of record, but in 
living witness, stand dressed in all their attractiveness 
and possibility, and how to grow into a Christianly 
manhood, a Christianly womanhood is just as clear in 
rudiment and in progress as how to grow into any 
ordinary calling or trade. And yet, in this great art of 
living, — the art of arts for all of us, the desirable and 
all-important consummation, — that very example, the 



EASTER. 



47 



living spirit and influence of Jesus, has been laid aside ; 
and we consent to be moulded by ten thousand other 
antagonistic influences, and to grow everyhow, after 
our own wills or the dictation of men and things about 
us. Satisfying ourselves in the virtue of a name, we 
go on to live much as if Christ had never lived, died, 
risen. So far as his example is concerned, he might 
as well be lying in a never opened tomb. With per- 
sistent ingenuity, we keep him from vision, we thrust 
him from thought. We go our own way. Clinging to 
his name, and in his name essaying to do many things, 
we grow away from that spirit whose stringent imper- 
ativeness is softened by the sweetness of his life and 
the grand results of resolute service. We make him 
really of no account, carefully laid away from sight and 
thought, and in history and in ourselves we have this 
unaccountable, this monstrous anomaly, a pattern by 
which nobody patterns, while everybody assumes to be 
by it patterned. How are we better than the whited 
sepulchres Jesus pointed out to his disciples ? 

What the Christian men and women have done with 
Christ all along these years of a Christian era is simply 
this, — they have laid him aside. They have not de- 
nied him : they have not forgotten him. They have 
confessed him, and then they have put him by, as one 
puts by the thing or thought that with a too faithful, 
troublesome pertinacity will keep itself before one, as 
the angel of the Lord would keep itself m the path of 
stubborn Balaam. Assuming to be walking after him, 
glowing with the desire to be named as his, in his name 
doing every manner of thing, and on it building every 
manner of hope, him men have simply waived aside; 



4 8 



EASTER. 



and all his mighty self has been as a buried death in 
the Church's enterprise and the individual's career. 

Empty, as the disciples found the tomb of Christ 
they expected to see, has the church life, individual 
life been of his life. The scattered cerements of the 
sacred body witnessed where the Christ had lain, wit- 
nessed to his death, and what more living witness have 
the Church and the soul ? Forms, feasts, fasts, profes- 
sions, cries of Lord, Lord, — cerements, swathing-bands, 
not the living soul. That is not in them. Our prov- 
erb is the play of Hamlet with Hamlet left out. The 
religion of the Church, the religion of the soul, is the 
religion of Christ with Christ left out. New churches 
building all the time, new sects rising all the time, new 
preachers, new views, new methods, great stir and 
interest and zeal, and every manner of thing laid hold 
of and brought in in his name, but not the Christ. 
Things not going right, the gospel not progressing, 
the world and the flesh and the devil successfully 
withstanding it, — an ever-growing, compact, and well- 
cemented kingdom arising to confront and threaten 
the kingdom of God, and men pressing into it, and the 
anointed custodians calling meetings and asking what 
to do, and devising new machinery, and gearing up 
and oiling old, themselves doubtful and quaking and 
distraught ; but the Christ not called in, still laid aside, 
that living spirit not invoked, without which all ma- 
chinery must be dumb and had better be dead. 

And so this Easter morning finds the world. Nearly 
two thousand times have men kept the high festival of 
this memorial service, — flower and language and hymn 
and prayer and praise and ceremony joining in acclaim 



EASTER. 



49 



to Him who was dead and is alive, yet not alive to the 
hearts, to the faith, to the needs, to the lives of the 
very men who shout and profess and commemorate. 
This is our to-day picture, our to-day fact, — immortal 
men not living as if immortal, but as if they were to 
eat and drink to-day and to-morrow die. We want to 
put away the corruptible law and life of the flesh, and 
put on the incorruptible law and life of the Spirit, to be 
clothed upon with the likeness of that One of all the 
sons of men whose life was a rising from the grave of 
trespasses and sins, whose spirit both points and leads 
to what can never decay. We need to grow into a 
diviner thing than the time shows, than the time as- 
pires to, than the time believes in. We need to take 
the Christ from where he has been laid, and allow him 
to walk abroad in the atmosphere of daily life, once 
more appealing pungently and convincingly and build- 
ing himself into the soul, its life. We do not need to 
keep Easter as a memorial ; but we do need that living 
Easter power which shall raise us above our every 
infirmity, and make us quick with the elements of the 
holy life. 

The point of it all seems to be not so much that 
Jesus has risen from the grave, and our hopes of a 
future are through that strengthened, as that because 
of him is the way out of the grave of trespass and sin. 
Immortality by itself is little. Merely to live again has 
nothing about it that one should desire it. The con- 
tinuance of being has no value. The value, the desire, 
is in the new reach possible to the soul when it has 
risen above the things obnoxious to an infinite purity 
and love, obnoxious to a man's own best thought and 



So 



EASTER. 



purpose. That which Jesus calls the eternal life is of 
more worth than any immortal life. It is the eternal 
life that gives the value to, that is the crown of the 
immortal life, that is more than cycles of ages, more 
than rest. And that thought should crown and con- 
secrate the Easter, that the spirit touched to new life 
breaks the tomb of carnal desires, rends the cerements 
of selfish pursuit, puts off the dross of the earthly part, 
and walks out into new duties and higher hopes ; and 
as the spirit of spring touches dead grass and buds, 
and makes new life course along their veins till all 
semblance of death is sloughed away, and Nature stands 
resplendent in the new vesture and glory of life, our 
souls, touched by the spirit of life in Jesus, put on 
their promise and their beauty, carnal things drop 
away, and the full flow of a diviner being, cleansing, 
purifying, elevating, throbs through these dull and lag- 
gard lives, supplying them with that quick power which 
shall transmute the man of earth into the man for 
heaven. Mary did not know where Jesus had been 
laid. She could not go to him. We do, and nothing 
stands between us and finding him except the stolidity 
of our wills. 

We do not want to have it said of us that we have 
laid away our Saviour. Rather would we have it said 
that we are risen with him, that we have sunk our 
lower selves, repressed what is base, and are growing 
to be like him. We do not want that men should say 
of us or we confess it of ourselves that Jesus is but 
a name. No presence, no power. It is not the dead 
Christ of a past history that we desire to own, but the 
living Christ of a present influence. We want to feel 



EASTER. 



51 



possessed by living power of faith in him, and then to 
feel it more, and after that still more. It was Mary's 
sadness that a body was gone : let it not be ours to 
miss that spirit which alone gives life, lifts man above 
what perishes, and crowns with honor and immortality. 
Easter songs, flowers, wishes, ceremonies, are nothing 
save as the spirit of Easter in our hearts, consecrating 
all that we are, do, and hope, enables us to leave 
behind as dead chrysalis all power of the inferior 
nature, while our ransomed souls wing themselves in 
new and broader flight, mounting as eagles mount, 
singing as larks sing, folding wing and husTiing song 
only as we rest upon the topmost peak of high en- 
deavor, and know ourselves to have found favor as 
God's sons. 

How shall we better keep this holy day of gladness, 
this queen of days, than by renewing our fealty to the 
One too much overlaid, forgot, and under his banner 
re-enlisting for the great struggle of life ? Life ! Who 
knows its meaning, who comprehends its vastness, 
since Jesus has said there is no death ? Who can 
make too much of this part of it ? Who too well fit 
him for the other ? 

Easter Sunday, 1879. 



ONE THING I DO. 



"This one thing I do." — Philippians iii., 13. 

Paul was a man of definite purpose. In all history, 
probably, no man more thoroughly in earnest, so pos- 
sessed by one great desire. He had one thing he 
would do. His whole make seems to have looked that 
way, — a man of an original, grand intention, of a con- 
densed individual force, who would do whatever he had 
to do with a might, with an intensity that should 
insure its thorough doing. Any cause which had him 
for a champion was sure to succeed. He would do its 
work wholly and bravely and singly. No frittering of 
capacities, no scattering of energy, no wasting of 
opportunities, no halves about him ; but what he is and 
what he does concentrate the entire man, — evidence 
of one and. the same spirit in every phase of his 
checkered career. Into every one, he put his whole 
self. No one could complain. No one can write it 
against him that he did not thoroughly do the thing he 
started to do. Whether haling people to prison, or 
riding to Damascus, or fitting himself in Arabia, or fol- 
lowing out the after career of industry, courage, and 
faith, one indomitable purpose impels him. Into his 
tent-making, his persecutions, his apostleship, he carried 



ONE THING I DO. 



53 



one and the same spirit. Each in its own season was 
that one thing he would do, the one thing he did. 

We talk a good deal about success, but a good deal 
the secret of it is consecration to one work, and con- 
centration upon it. That is very much truer than the 
seductive mixture of nonsense and falsehood with 
which so many tickle themselves and deceive others. 

Success is an achievement and has conditions ; and 
chief of them are these, which not the most fortunate 
or the most largely endowed may overlook. Condi- 
tions are never very fascinating, nor will anything 
short of the bitterest experience convince some men of 
their necessity. Industry that shall never tire, not 
want purpose, will alone redeem even genius from 
mortifying failure. Genius, with all its brilliant, but 
uncertain, desultory, and, on the whole, valueless efforts, 
has not made the world much its debtor. Its obliga- 
tions, rather, are to single-purposed, industrious, fixed 
mediocrity. Opportunities, surroundings, social posi- 
tion, and influence, the thousand outside accidents or 
natural advantages to which men attribute success, 
have really very little to do with success ; while they 
more generally hinder than help the individual, spoil 
rather than make him. I don't like that word " suc- 
cess," when used as the aim of life or the criterion of 
it. A man is to let all thought of success go, to sweep 
from his imagination the glamours with which it fasci- 
nates, to put himself at the work of life in the spirit of 
fidelity, to do the best that he can do because it is 
right, and then dismiss every thought of consequence, 
refuse to gauge himself or allow himself to be gauged 
by success, I do not suppose Paul ever thought of it, 



54 



ONE THING I DO. 



Jesus never did, and no true man should. Let it come, 
if it will ; and, if it won't, why then pray for heart and 
pluck to bear it, and try again, always sure that honors 
and wealth and the thousand things men prize may not 
come, but consecration to and concentration upon any 
one honorable work must give a career eternity will 
never be ashamed of, and enough worldly return to 
keep from the clutches of poverty. There is every 
manner of misfortunes attending our mortal condition, 
but nothing has yet occurred in human experience to 
shake man's bottom-most convictions that fixed and 
resolute energies insure what is best in any success. 

When we start in life) we do not think enough about 
this fixing upon one thing and sticking to it. Young 
people have not a great deal of that quality. It is 
something they have got to learn. 

Our first striking into life is a good deal like our first 
striking out in the water, — a very large quantity of sur- 
plus energy very illy directed, spatter and splutter very 
discouraging, to very little purpose. We are all abroad, 
flustered, concentrated not at all, because we have not 
learned the habit as the necessity of fixedness, of pick- 
ing out from the great mass the one particular thing 
upon which we will lay out ourselves. And somehow 
our education, both at home and at school, does not 
help us a bit. They alike tend to fritter. What do 
you for a child's mind, when you compel it to wrestle 
with a half-dozen different branches of study in a single 
school session, get it a good start at history and then 
call for geometry, and, when well in the intricacies 
of angles and sines and what not, call for French ? 
What do you for the trade-apprentice, when you are 



ONE THING I DO. 



55 



always taking him away from the thing he is just at, 
when he has to drop file and take hammer, or turns 
from adze to sand-paper, this moment is on some nice 
and delicate job, and the next at rough work that taxes 
all his muscle and unsteadies his mind for what he was 
just at ? We talk about the narrowing tendencies of 
the divisions and subdivisions of labor ; and when a man 
can only make the heel of a shoe, but can't put on the 
sole, life does seem whittled down to a pretty distress- 
ing minimum. And yet the mastery of a single thing, 
however minute, is of very much more importance than 
the mastery of nothing, — the mastery inevitably his who 
fixes himself to no definite purpose, — and only by such 
concentration on one thing can we get perfection. 
With every drawback, the only way is to do one thing. 
The men who have accomplished the real things of life 
are not the brilliant, erratic men who have turned their 
hands to everything, but the plodding men who have 
stuck to one thing. With all the ridicule we have 
played off on them, the men of one idea have been the 
men to heave the world ahead ; and so the men of one 
work. It is one idea, one work, one thing clung to, as 
a man clings to the plank that holds him from death, 
that has filled the world with accomplishment ; and men. 
prove that they begin to understand it by this matter 
of specialties in every vocation, which is one of the 
significant things of this generation. I suppose Colum- 
bus was a man of one idea, a bore, a fanatic whom peo- 
ple hated to see coming, because he would be sure to 
talk about the great unknown continent; and yet it was 
his persistence in the thing which he made the one 
idea of his life that opened up a new world and made 



ONE THING I DO. 



your life and mine possible. We know what a pestifer- 
ous set of fellows those were, a few years ago, for whom 
we had hard words and mobs, who, in season and out 
of season, in every style of language and of garb, by 
day and by night, and everywhere, preached the gospel 
of anti-slavery, and yet, on very diffuse, general con- 
viction that slavery was wrong, never would have forced 
the issue. It is the purpose to do one thing, and the 
doing it, that achieves result. The engineer of the 
passenger train does not tend the fire, and stand at 
fc»he brake, and collect the tickets, and manage the ex- 
press, and handle the freight, and chat with the pas- 
sengers, and play cards in the smoking-car, an ubiqui- 
tous and generally ornamental or overburdened official ; 
but he is in the cab, his eye on the track, his hand 
where it can touch lever or throttle, his whole self alert, 
a man of an incarnate consciousness, no off-thought or 
power. He is doing one thing; and because he does 
it, your safety and the journey's success. And think 
how it has been in science, in invention, in all manner 
of discovery, in scholarship, state, art, mechanics, phi- 
lanthropy. It is the one thing at a time, the one thing 
well held to till accomplished, each separate stone well 
placed and thoroughly built in, that builds up causes, 
truths, men. Put everything that you are into a bewil- 
dered series of vague and ill-assorted effort, and you do 
nothing real, valuable, lasting. It is like the old fowl- 
ing-piece that was a master-hand at scattering small 
shot all through a flock, ruffling feathers and breaking 
legs and wings, but really bringing down nothing. Put 
all you are into one thing : stick to that. It is like the 
rifle at Creedmoor or at Wimbledon. It takes out the 
very central eye, and bears away the prize. 



ONE THING I DO. 



57 



And so, whatever of belittlement may come of the 
doing one thing, we must run the risk for sake of 
the good that can in no other way be reached, and learn 
to counteract it by that counteracting a well-instructed 
conscience insures. We may write it as a first con- 
dition to useful, honorable life anywhere, without 
which is no accomplishment, that the power of the 
whole man must be laid out on the selected thing. 
One thing must be resolved on, and that one thing 
done. The old patriarch, dying away back there in the 
centuries, said it of his son, " Unstable as water, thou 
shalt not excel " ; and history and biography and experi- 
ence have been ever since repeating the fact. You and 
I know many a failure in manhood, solely for lack of 
concentrated purpose ; while we have seen many a one, 
pigmy otherwise, grow by it into a son of Anak. 

And when we see what a fixed devotedness to one 
thing does, consecration and concentration, one won- 
ders that one ever hesitates at anything. The most 
obdurate has to succumb, the most hopeless yields. 
There is no obstacle. To-day's necessities are the im- 
possibilities of the last generation, every one of them 
the result of somebody's fixed adhesion to one thing, 
till it was done. So tunnels pierce the roots of moun- 
tains, and telegraphic wires lie undisturbed in ocean 
deeps, far spaces in the firmament above are read, and 
fickle weather induced to make known its secret. One 
feels it to be the sesame before which all things shall 
unlock themselves. Somebody says, " That man is ter- 
rible who does one thing." I remember just after the 
battle of Winchester that General Sheridan said this 
to me, "When I go, I want to go all over." He put 



58 ONE THING I DO, 

everything that was in him into the thing he was about. 
It was life or death, hit or miss, neck or nothing, and all 
that not in the reckless, uncalculating way we have been 
apt to think, — something definite, no half-way ; and so 
he was terrible, — terrible because every obstacle that 
put itself in his way had got to get out of it, cost what 
it might. It was the soldier spirit we want a little* 
more of in life. I love to think of men who are up to 
something the like, not the hair-brain, dare-devil men 
dashing against the mills of the gods, but the hardy and 
daring and resolute men not to sway or yield, who con- 
quer in all fields, and not only write their own name in 
glory letters, but leave the horizon all threaded with 
gold when they are sunk beneath it. When a man 
says, " That thing has to be done, and I am going to do 
it," whether it be a battery to be taken, or a habit to be 
conquered, or any little home stent, or daily trivial 
duty ; when you read, by word, by deed, by look, that 
the great resolve possesses him, as a divine spirit might 
have possessed the Pythoness, — possibly you may feel 
that the word " terrible " hardly defines it ; but just let 
him strike difficulty, meet resistance, find himself sore 
pressed, and then you feel not the sublimity of purpose 
merely, but the terrible power that lies in him, resolved 
to do the one thing. 

And there is something in one fixed, definite pur- 
pose that unfolds a man to himself, and gives him confi- 
dence, courage, and growth. A man does not begin to 
grow till he has purpose. He does not understand 
what is in him nor suspect what he can be. Alas, how 
many live out all their days without understanding 
what is in them, and go away with no suspicion of the 



ONE THING I DO. 59 

kind of men they might have grown up to under the 
inspiration of a single resolute purpose ! It is amazing 
the sluggish, contented embryo that one can contrive 
to be before he has thoroughly roused himself, and 
what confidence and courage he comes to, who has set 
himself his task and measured himself against it. 
That is a new day, the dawn of a new life to the boy, 
when he has taken himself out of the routine of the 
child, and resolved to be something in lesson or play or 
conduct; and the thrill with which the young man put 
his hand on his earnest life-work tingles yet along the 
very nerves of age. It makes us almost giant to feel 
the birth-throe of a living purpose. The lioness, re- 
proached because she gave but one at a birth, replied, 
"Yes; but that a lion." And the one lion purpose 
born to a man, to grow into the one thing of life, is a 
birth to be proud of and never forgotten. After it, we 
are never the same. It has lifted out of old conditions, 
limitations : it has put a spirit in us as the new inspira- 
tion toward a broader life, the quick play "of whose 
pulses, vibrating through the whole man, impels us to 
thought and deed. You may have noticed in your boy 
how he seems to have sprung in a night into a great 
manhood. He laid himself down a child, he arose a 
man, — the boy behind, and he a new creature in all the 
grand, fixed purpose and resolve of life. You may 
remember the leap you made yourself, shut out of and 
beyond self, when you had come up to the great crisis 
and turning of life and were resolved what to be, and 
had set your first foot out in the new journey, and had 
turned the new leaf in life. In that act, you stood self- 
revealed, were more of a man than you knew for, had 



6o 



ONE THING I DO. 



more of the stuff and substance in you ; and life, which 
turned from you as playmate, you welcomed in his new 
garb of yoke-fellow. It is a proud, a solemn, a sublime 
moment that sees the soul register its purpose and 
write it as with imperishable letters, "This one thing I 
do, come weal, come woe, come ban of man or shock 
of time, come sorrow and distress and loss, — though I 
stand alone, here I stand, this I do " ; and the life of 
slow, earnest, arduous toil that follows partakes of the 
grandeur of the birth. A dull and depressing toil, too, 
sometimes ; and often has life to be taken at a dead 
pull, at every disadvantage, steam shut off, brakes 
down, and all around yawning despairs. The more 
the need for just that purpose, which comes to us 
phrased in the fiery words of Luther, but which was 
keyed to a loftier note by the Buddhist missionary who 
said, " Even if the gods were united with men, they 
should not frighten me away." That is what we want, 
— the purpose to do from which nor devil nor gods 
shall drive, before which the very despairs shall be 
dumb and impossibilities compliant. It was in the 
midst of such that Paul cheered and braced himself 
by saying, " This one thing I do." It was the device 
upon his banner, his cheery, always cry, the word ever 
re-echoing its response from the far and beckoning 
heights, leading and sustaining till he laid all down. 
The "Excelsior" of the poet is but the Paul of the 
flesh. 

The tendency and temptation to fritter, and the 
amount of it discernible in the lives about us, the lack 
of concentration, is one of the most alarming features 
of our American civilization. We have been educating 



ONE THING I DO. 



6l 



ourselves away from the virtues of our ancestry, and it 
begins to tell. Necessity, perhaps, repelled them to 
fixedness of habit and purpose quite as much as any 
principles of faith or conduct zV;zpelled them ; but, un- 
deniably, they were a people of truer calibre and 
greater specific character than we threaten to become, 
for as yet the disasters to American character are 
threatenings, foreshadows, rather than any actual, posi- 
tive, permanent deterioration. The decay of useful 
habit and occupation among our young women, the 
immense amount of aimless nothing they manage to 
infuse into their lives, the absence of exact and thor- 
ough and resolute and useful occupation ; the minutes 
gone here, the hours there, upon an industry that 
means little and amounts to less ; the superabundance 
of waste upon the purely ornamental and ephemeral, 
the lack of sober setting one's self down to what hon- 
estly may be called work so as to become proficient in 
the homely graces, — in short, the absolute fritter of 
life, to which the average American young woman sub- 
mits herself, is only equalled in disaster by the folly 
of her brother, who is everything by turns and nothing 
long, who is here to-day and there to-morrow, this one 
week, that the next, so that, unconsciously, our salu- 
tation has got to be, "Well, what are you doing 
now?" As such times as these specially betray, the 
market-place is full of those who have half-learned 
trades, or of those who are just tide-waiters, ready for 
the thing that turns up, and not fitted to do that well. 
• You find that most men who come to you for aid are 
the men who never had a definite occupation, have 
never fixed themselves to anything, have nothing of 



62 



ONE THING I DO. 



which they can say, "This one thing I do." It is amaz- 
ing, the catalogue of things a man will tell you he has 
turned his hand to ; while it is all but impossible to find 
a man who can do any one thing well, — and very much, 
I think, because of the idolatry which the average 
Yankee has so long had for the god Smart. Young 
men think themselves smart, and trust to that : they 
have no consecration or concentration ; and it is a 
threatening cloud of doom that rises up before the 
future, — and he is no croaker who says it, — unless our 
young people shall be compelled to see that, not in- 
terest, but necessity as well as principle, demand a 
quick and radical change. We can't go so another 
generation. We must get the old fire of purpose, the 
old fixedness, into life. We must inspire young lives 
with the true elements of manhood and womanhood. 
We, as they, must come to see what life means, what 
life wants of us, and put ourselves at that with all the 
power we are masters of, and do that thing as if it 
were the only thing to be done and we alone could do 
it, — consecrate ourselves to, concentrate ourselves upon 
it. That is the only assurance that you can have that 
the things of life will be done. One of the best lessons 
I ever Learned was from a laborer with the city teams, 
whom I watched for years. I have seldom seen the 
spirit of the one thing more fully embodied. He 
seemed to feel as if the world were made for him to dig 
a ditch in or make a street through, so incarnate was 
he of purpose about the thing in hand, so resolute in 
industry; and every nerve he had, the whole volume of 
his muscle and sinew* were given to his mission. It 
was really sublime, — the tireless energy with which 



ONE THING I DO. 



63 



he put himself into the thing he did. It is again true, 
and always true, and everywhere and every time true, 
what the quaint old worthy said : — 

" Who sweeps a room as for thy laws 
Makes that and th' action fine." 

But let us not forget that the one thing Paul said 
he would do was to press forward to the possession of 
that spirit that was in his Master, from which he said 
principalities, powers, things present, things to come, 
height, depth, life nor death, nor any other creature, 
had power to separate him. He had one over-all thing 
he wanted to do, and he had one motive for doing it. 
What in religion men want is .both, — the one thing to 
do and one great, prominent motive. A thousand little 
ones never will make one great one. Possibly, it may 
do to enter upon any other pursuit from a variety of 
motives ; but as one great power upholds the world and 
sends it spinning through the spaces, while at the 
moment of need a myriad little ones might leave us 
the prey of their insignificance, so, to have a grand 
Christian life, we must have not only one example, but 
one motive for accepting and following it, and in the 
strength of its simplicity and sufficiency move to the 
great one work. Paul has supplied us with the motive 
to become Christ-like, as Christ has with the example. 
That fixed, it is for us to be the one thing. The inter- 
mittent, fluctuating attention we give it, the divided 
affections which it has, are not the means to a success- 
ful issue. There are venerable sins in us will not 
fall before anything less than a determined and per- 
sistent siege. Not an hour's diversion from our pur- 



6 4 



ONE THING I DO. 



pose but is felt, but weakens our capacity and prolongs 
our strife. We have not the hours to spare. A work, 
the issues of which no man can overvalue, waits for our 
whole energy. Our soul-sparks struck from the divine 
essence need kindling into a pure, steady, and intense 
flame. They can only be fitted to inherit the kingdom 
by that genuine, entire devotion which shall lift them 
above the wiles of other employments, and leave them 
at liberty to love and labor for the One. 



Swampscott, July, 1875. 



VI. 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 

" The kingdom of God." — Luke xvi., 16. 

The phrases "kingdom of God" and "kingdom of 
heaven " are old Hebrew phrases, and used inter- 
changeably. They mean one and the same thing ; that 
is, the rule, dominion, supremacy, of what is true, 
right, God-like, heavenly, not a place, but a condition. 
Paul says, "The kingdom of God is not meat and drink, 
but righteousness, joy, and peace, in the Holy Spirit." 
Jesus says, " Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his 
righteousness," and afterward declares that kingdom to 
be within. 

What I have to say of the kingdom of God, just 
now, lies in a little different direction. And I would 
like to gather within its realm things not enough seen 
to be of it, nay, .supposed to be contrary and alien to it. 
Jesus says, "The kingdom of God is within." I want 
to say that it embraces all things. It runs back to 
that time which science includes within unknown thou- 
sands of years, which Scripture comprehends in the 
one word "chaos," to that "beginning" of which no 
man knows ; and it runs forward to the end of time 
and things, of which extreme, as of the first, again no 
man knows. It embraces and it holds within itself all 
that was and is and is to be. Men have not yet come 



66 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 



fully to understand this. They have a good many king- 
doms besides God's ; and they put him over a very 
restricted province. Scarcely was Christianity recog- 
nized before it dwindled into a strange incongruity 
and complication, betraying no more elevated concep- 
tion of the Deity than the mythologies do, the whole 
matter being cut up and divided very much as Homer 
had it, among the Olympian gods. 

Very little was left to the Supreme beyond a vague, 
far-away, impersonal oversight. That phase was suc- 
ceeded by a condition of things no better. God was 
just as much wronged, obscured, his kingdom invaded, 
taken away from him, when Christianity, following 
Persian leading, gave most of it to the devil. If you 
believe what is a great deal said to-day, you will have 
to believe that this evil spirit still rules over a large 
part of the kingdom of God, that our God is but a 
very helpless God. Then, theology, jealous of the 
divine right, believing only in a revealed word, to all 
intent and purpose excludes him from nature, so that 
between materialists, who deny him anywhere, and 
religionists, who would have his kingdom to be the 
exclusive one of their faith, the great All-in- All Spirit 
is a virtual recluse, the larger part of material and 
human affairs are within their own separate kingdoms, 
under other cognizance and control than his. A very 
fundamental need is the need of some conception of 
the extent of the divine kingdom. When David wrote 
it so grandly, — " Whither shall I go from thy spirit, or 
whither shall I flee from thy presence ? If I ascend 
up into heaven, thou art there : if I make my bed in 
hell, behold thou art there. If I take the wings of the 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 



67 



morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 
even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand 
shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness will cover 
me, even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the 
darkness hideth not from thee, but the night shineth 
as the day : the darkness and the light are both alike 
to thee," — he wrote it better than, he knew. Such lan- 
guage seems very wonderful, as do many like outbursts, 
in which the glories of the heavens and the movements 
of the winds and the grandeur of the storms and the 
awe of silence and of night speak not of themselves, 
but of Him to whose kingdom they belong, of whose 
power and majesty they are the witness and expression. 
It was such an advance upon the best heathen belief, 
that had put all these things of the outward world 
under separate and subordinate deities : it is such an ad- 
vance upon the belief of most of us, of this busy crowd 
who profess and call ourselves Christians, to whom 
these things are as ever-present as to the old-time 
singer, while they do not sing to us the same constant 
and glad melody. He drew them all within the king- 
dom, made them subject to the handling of God : we 
are but too ready to rule God out ; and to-day the strug- 
gle and wrangle, a good deal, is as between a material 
kingdom and a divine. Men talk about certain mate- 
rial changes in the brain, and draw diagrams to show 
how separate molecules assume different relations to 
one another in response to, or rather as creative of, 
certain sentiments, thoughts, resolves, and point to 
these things, changes, as within the realm of order of 
a physical kingdom. I cannot help feeling however 
wonderful and true that thought, how much truer. 



68 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 



more wonderful, an older thought, that would keep 
these within God's kingdom. This effort to leave God 
out of the things that are his, whether it be made by 
man's indifference or man's familiarity with phenom- 
ena, or with what he calls nature's laws, not only 
shuts us off from many grand and tender thoughts, 
from much delicate and helpful sentiment, but really 
shears of their grandest proportions, as of their most 
wholesome truth, many things capable of carrying us 
on to the Eternal, materially and inevitably. 

It is well enough to know what science has to say 
about the structure and material of our frames, to take 
it home to our thoughts that we, so compact in flesh 
and blood and bone, are really but a " few pounds of 
solid matter distributed through six pailfuls of water" ; 
but to stop there, to remand us to the physical king- 
dom, to keep us out of God's kingdom, were no service 
to us. We had better be ignorant about the compo- 
nents and properties of our bodies, so we can keep the 
thought of them as within God's dominion and care. 
It is vastly interesting to follow the astronomer, the 
microscopist, the evolutionist, through their marvel- 
lous unravellings ; but if you establish them within a 
realm of their own, if they contain their own causes, if 
the behind, primal creative impulse is of and in them- 
selves, you rob God's kingdom of his grand omnipo- 
tence, you make puny principality his dominion, shut 
in, shut out by the surrounding peaks which divide it, 
in cold abruptness, from the kingdom of a godless 
evolution. 

A good man said one day, when I was pleading for 
morality in business, and that no one had a right to 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 



6 9 



allow the expediency of market or the temptations of 
individual gain to override the grand .fundamentals of 
honesty and truth, " God has nothing to do with the 
grocer's business," slicing off one great province of 
his kingdom by a word, taking all the active hours of 
his life, his plans and hopes, straight out of the keep- 
ing of the Almighty, shutting himself within a little 
kingdom of his own. 

We cannot do this arbitrary thing. We cannot, 
at whatever line we will, bow the Great One out. 
His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom. All places, 
powers, times, seasons, eternities, are within his do- 
minion : it cannot be brought to desolation by any 
such division ; and though we rend away, here and 
there, portions of it, and only leave him, like some 
Jupiter upon an Olympus, a far-off king amid a host of 
lesser and rival deities, it is, in the end, we that are 
rent. His kingdom stands, world without end, indi- 
visible and one. 

When Jesus so emphatically told his disciples that 
the kingdom of God was within, he did not mean to 
deny that it is without also. With just as much in- 
tenseness and fervor was he careful to show that the 
kingdom of God was without, and has tied forever the 
flowers blushing at his feet, the sparrows circling above 
his head, the clouds along the western sky, the hairs 
of one's head, the cubits of one's stature, to the thought 
of a divine providence, revealing it, through them to 
us, as itself was revealed by them to him. 

Though I cannot quote it to you by chapter and 
verse, "The kingdom of God is without you," yet it is 
there, and, in its time and place, as unqualifiedly em- 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 



phatic as the other. The great nature volume bears 
witness of his authorship as clearly as the tablets of 
stone which we are told were written by his fingers. 
The things writ upon her pages, writ in flower, in star, 
in minute and marvellous mechanism, in chemical 
change, in advances and retrogrades, in growths and 
deaths, in blossoms and decays, in solar systems and 
infinitesimal existences, have behind them his guid- 
ing, his law, his will ; drop from his fingers, as the 
type from the hand of the setter ; are the transcript of 
his thought, the fresh, visible record of what centuries 
long gone he did, of what to-day he does, and read out, 
in clear, indubitable phrase, his honor and glory. 

The kingdom of nature is his kingdom, informed 
freshly and, as I love to think despite all the chain of 
intermediate causes which I do not disallow, imme- 
diately by him. I know men frown upon it, and they 
array their fact against it ; but I love to think that 
David was literally right, and that the moon and the 
stars, and, if these, all things, are made by the very 
finger of God. I love to feel that his voice calls out 
the spring, and that the hurrying breezes and the 
sweeping storms, the movements of tides and harvests 
of earth, and all things that live and grow, wherever 
they have their being, bear not only the image and 
superscription of the One, but are his handiwork. I 
would put God close against his work, as I would the 
mechanic close against his tool, his creating thought 
and will against his created thing, so that I might feel 
it to be his and take great gladness at the feeling ; and 
I would have the gladness grow to reverence, and rev- 
erence to love, and love to faith, and this fair universe 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 



71 



become in every part, in very deed, the kingdom and 
glory of God. 

There are, besides, other provinces in the divine king- 
dom than this vast and varied one of nature. God's 
kingdom is kingdom within kingdom. The kingdom of 
thought is his : men use it as if it were theirs. They 
abuse it in many ways, and feel no account owing him 
for abuse. But mind is God's as well as matter ; and 
all that a man makes or gets out of his mind belongs to 
God, as much as that he makes or gets out of his soul. 
I think it is the great thing not to let our thought at 
any time prove traitor, and work toward the setting-up 
of any other empire, the sapping of that one. In all 
the freedom and revel of it, in all its allowed liberty 
and wonderful range, in its lighter, in its graver mo- 
ments, in its depressions, in its aspirations, have a care 
that it do not escape, that it do not rebel at the bar- 
riers beyond which lies an outer kingdom of darkness, 
where are wailing and weeping and gnashing of teeth. 
I have no right to hand my thought over to the custody 
of any thing that makes against the interests of God's 
kingdom. Not that I need be thinking of them all the 
time, chained like a galley slave, or doomed in penance 
like a nun to one spot, one method, one work. God 
is served, his ends advanced, his kingdom secured by 
the indirection of pure and honorable living as by the 
special acts and services of meditation and of prayer 
and worship. 

Only it must be pure and honorable living, the un- 
studied and unconscious outgo of pure and honorable 
thought, the living water of an untainted source. 
Whether it be the thought that is born and dies un- 



72 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 



voiced, passing as a dream, or brooded over as the heart 
of life ; whether the thought that shapes itself in art, 
in painting, in sculpture, in building, or that goes out 
seeking other thought through literature of whatever 
branch; whether thought backward — memory — or 
thought forward — hope or fear, — it all belongs to, 
should all be kept within, all subsidiary to the one king- 
dom and rule, drawing men out of the silent and secret 
seclusion of their own less and more trifling things, 
drawing them on to greater strength, to broader reaches, 
helping them to soar with upward gaze, as the eagle 
soars and gazes, till they can rest within the bosom of 
the Infinite. 

It fairly oppresses one to remember that all the won- 
derful things men have said, and have handed through 
the ages down to us, have been the outgo of feeble and 
timid aspiration, and the bringing back from the be- 
yond Source, great riches and treasures out of an 
infinite wisdom and knowledge, impressing it upon us 
that the limitless range within which the human intel- 
lect has liberty is God's kingdom, as well as is the 
limitless expanse within which light and gravitation 
and the blue ether harmonize and dwell. 

The same faith that feels that the man can take no 
wings and flee no whither but God is there, that the 
man cannot get outside of God's kingdom, attests. the 
inability of thought to escape the bands and limits 
assigned it, and that all these ample returns that troop 
about and surprise and gladden, instruct and elevate, 
are but echoes of the great Spirit dwelling within us 
all, to whom all things that are are subject. 

The same may one say of truth. Truth may not be 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 



73 



tampered with, because, how broad soever of itself and 
how valuable, over all it is of 'God's kingdom, and you 
may not annul or tarnish it. In its lesser grades, as 
truth between man and man ; in its broader sphere, as 
truth of science, literature, religion, it is subordinate to 
the great, over-all Being, its founder and father, within 
his realm and jurisdiction. Wherever truth is, there is 
God; and, wherever truth is, it leads to God. There 
is no danger in following truth wherever it leads, what- 
ever it overthrows or destroys. It ever keeps within 
the lines appointed of God : it will never cross the ap- 
pointed limit. It needs no warning of revenue law or 
custom-house or excise man or soldiery. It deals in 
nothing contraband, it seeks nothing of its own. It is 
alive with another spirit. It knows itself to be hand- 
maiden of that which is as much beyond itself as the 
unborrowed light of the central sun of suns is beyond 
the light that glitters from the surface of a broken bit 
of glass flung on the ocean beach. Truth is grand in 
itself, whether from a child's lips or from those clothed 
with the power of intellect, experience, or character; 
but truth has only its own grandeur when we conceive 
of it and all its wealth of worth as but one of the 
innumerable provinces which go to make up the king- 
dom of our God. 

Take one more material thing, and say the same of 
mechanism, in whose marvellous resources and abilities 
man has in these just past years been inclined to see 
but the reflex of his own might and the extension 
of his own kingdom. Nothing strikes us as more 
utterly gross, unethereal, unspiritual, than the machin- 
ery — oily, noisy, and grimy — which in complicated 



n 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 



variety makes and controls the comfort and the wealth 
of our generation, and contains within itself "the 
promise and the potency" of things in the future, the 
very possibility of which dizzies the soberest brain. 
We are only at the beginning of the triumphs of the 
mechanical section of the great kingdom ; and many a 
one, unsettled by what has been achieved, conceives of 
mechanism as standing with its hand at the throttle of 
the universe ready to defy Omnipotence, bold to make 
the attempt to run the great machine itself. We have 
those who, in thought at least, would dare the old at- 
tempt of Phaeton with the chariot of the sun ; men 
who do not see God at the centre of the machine, but 
man ; and the more the machine does, the more they 
see man, — like Herod before the people, — pleased with 
the flattery and considering themselves as gods. I 
more dislike and doubt this materialism, the material- 
ism of practical men, than the more pronounced mate- 
rialism of the schools. 

One day at the Centennial Exhibition, at the hush of 
noon, I stood, one in the great crowd awaiting the 
starting again of the great engine. By and by, as the 
hour struck, it seemed to stretch and yawn and draw a 
long breath, like a man rousing from slumber, then 
slowly and with half-force to begin its work, and then 
at last, thoroughly roused, the ponderous beam rose 
and fell, the piston sunk and lifted itself again. Near 
and away off, I heard the whirl and whirr of wheels and 
saw the swift gliding of belts, and I knew that all over 
the many buildings life and labor responded to the 
dumb throbs of this lately so inert mass before me. 
Men and women looked at each other. "Great is Cor- 



THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 



75 



liss," they exclaimed ; but an inaudible voice spoke, 
" Great is God." His spirit was within the wheels, his 
breath informed with life the interlacing bands. At 
his word, swift shuttles flew, accurate cogs interlocked ; 
and, to the systole and diastole of the great iron heart, 
whole miles of machinery responded with a nimble, ac- 
curacy that outran that of human fingers. These great 
vessels, crowding through storm and night ; these huge 
locomotives, following the iron rails through zones" and 
continents, over mountains and along valleys, doing the 
traffic and bearing the burdens of harvests and com- 
merce ; and these watches with delicate accuracy tell- 
ing the time beats of the sun and systems; photo- 
graph, telegraph, telephone, — they, and whatever else 
the genius of mechanism shall devise, send up their 
consenting voice to the oneness and the glory of the 
kingdom of God, of which they with their marvel and 
their magnitude are but a small part. 

So one might go on and tell how broad the domain 
of that kingdom of which we, too, are. I do not know 
what it is, but to me the satisfaction is immense. I 
feel the glow and quiver of it, that I can believe that 
everywhere all things are of God. From everywhere 
to everywhere, I can go nowhere, can find nothing that 
is out of his kingdom. The great revivalist talks a 
great deal of men who are "out of Christ." To me, it 
is a grand thing to feel that nothing can be out of God, 
that all are parts of one glory and one kingdom ; that 
there are no divisions and un-harmonies, but all things 
bound in one, to one end, for one good. It is not that 
at the uttermost bound of earth I still find him, but 
that at the uttermost reach of space, of time, eternity, 



76 



The kingdom of god. 



of truth, of power, of thought, hope, and love, I find 
him myself, in all directions, under all guises, a citizen 
of his kingdom, by no possibility of escaping. If you 
want to get an idea of God, of the vast and the infinite 
power he is, do not go to the heated pleadings of men 
or to the cooler logic of theological statement, but go to 
your own spirit, with the door shut, and then from its 
silence step into the world, or follow out some thought, 
or trace some truth, or into the busy wheels and mech- 
anism of life put inspiring God. 

It will move, it will awe, it will satisfy you ; and then 
when your Bible comes to tell you about your heavenly 
Father, and you follow all the wise words of good and 
holy men, and add to the kingdom within the kingdom 
without, you will have clearer thought of the infinite 
marvel of your own being, and all the interacting har- 
monies among which you dwell, and life will grow to 
one long interpreting of the one Spirit that animates 
all things, and seeks through all to lift the human soul 
out of its solitude and littleness into that wondrous 
sympathy and companionship which binds each to all 
and all to God. 

February, 1877. 



VII. 



GENTLE INFLUENCES. 

" And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, 
that David took an harp and played with his hand, so Saul was 
refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him." — 
I. Samuel xvi., 23. 

Saul had proved himself unworthy of the trust 
reposed in him, and had fallen under the divine dis- 
pleasure. It was told him by the prophet that the 
sceptre should pass out of his family. He became 
jealous, irritable, and occasionally fell into fits of the 
most profound melancholy, during which it was danger- 
ous for any one to oppose or offend him. As this ten- 
dency increased upon him, his friends felt the necessity 
of taking some steps toward its removal, and, remem- 
bering that he had always been sensible to the influ- 
ence of music, they proposed that some able musician 
should be obtained, whose duty it should be to play to 
the king, whenever these fits came on. This meets 
with the king's approval ; and one of the courtiers, 
recalling the skill and sweetness with which he had 
heard the young son of Jesse play upon the harp, men- 
tions his name to the king, at the same time making- 
such allusion to his personal qualities and prowess as 
induces Saul to send to his father and demand the 
attendance of the young David. 

So the future king, a bright-eyed boy of fifteen sum- 



78 



GENTLE INFLUENCES. 



mers, found himself first within the precincts of that 
royal abode which, in the end, was to be his own 
home ; while Saul, ignorant of the fact that he was 
so preparing the way for. his successor, received him 
gladly, and, won upon by his beauty, his manners, his 
bravery, promoted him to the honorable place of armor- 
bearer. His presence was a comfort to him. "And it 
came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon 
Saul, that David took an harp and played with his 
hand, so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil 
spirit departed from him." 

What power was that thus gained ! David but 
passed his hand over the strings of his harp, and the 
maniac soul was calm and submissive as a child. He 
whom all feared, who had hurled his ready javelin at 
his only son even, became a man again under the 
soothing of music ; at first thought, a thing as little 
likely to produce such result as any that could be 
named, — a thing of mere airy sounds, which would 
seem to beat against the nerves of a crazed brain as 
fruitlessly as the waves against the rock. And yet, 
though only sound, sound knv, sweet, harmonious, im- 
pressing only the wave of air that passed it, dying 
as soon as born, it calmed the rage of the monarch, 
lulled his jealousy, and brought him to himself again. 
Though only this frail, delicate thing, it has done what 
nothing else could do, — tamed the beast, the savage, 
and the madman, and wrought mighty changes in 
character and life. What is mightier than music? It 
expresses what language and painting and sculpture 
and architecture fail to express. The simple melody, 
the solemn chant, the elaborate opera or oratorio^ the 



GENTLE INFLUENCES. 



79 



human voice, the wonderful combination that utters 
itself in a well-appointed orchestra or peals from an 
organ or a chime of bells, each and all attest a power 
of expression in music, unapproachable by any other 
which is given man. 

The songs of a nation are said to be stronger than 
its laws. At the sound of a national anthem, the 
patriot's heart beats, he grows brave, and is ready to 
do or die. 

Music lifts the deadened soul up to worship, makes a 
deeper gladness in the joyful, soothes sorrow when all 
things beside fail, reawakens hope, gives courage and 
endurance. The invisible harmonies thrill through the 
whole being, permeate our animal and our spiritual 
nature, and touch a depth far beyond what has before 
been touched. The coward running for his life catches 
the note of some " God save the King," he halts, and 
turns, and is a man again. The glazing eye of faith 
grows bright again, as the familiar hymn for the last 
time reaches the ear. All emotions express themselves 
in song, — the gladness of joy, the humility of contrition, 
the bitterness of sorrow, the fervor of gratitude, the 
rapture of love. When the world was completed and 
God rested from his first great labor, the morning stars 
sang together. Music was the first acclaim of gratitude 
and joy that broke the silence of creation. When 
Christ was born, no word was uttered, no voice npoke, 
no thunder muttered, no lightning flashed, but music 
broke the stillness of the Judean night, and an angel 
chant wafted the benison of heaven to the worn and 
weary waiting ones of earth. And so, as earth passes, 
it sometimes seems as if the ear, that grew dull tg 



8o 



GENTLE INFLUENCES. 



earthly sounds, caught other nobler strains, as if that 
which is the highest reach of expression here were the 
common language of heaven. 

It would seem a foolish statement to make, if it were 
not everywhere a recognized fact that great power is 
not with men and things which have the name of it. 
Some obscure man will write a song : it shall pass from 
lip to lip, from heart to heart, till it becomes* the chant 
of liberty to a million souls, and tyrants and thrones 
and powers shall melt before it. You marvel at the 
ponderous machinery which drives the thousand rat- 
tling looms of the factory or propels the vessel in the 
teeth of the gale across the ocean, and you use it as an 
emblem of power ; and yet the power is in that almost 
invisible vapor which in repose sails lazily up from 
' every evening cup of tea, and in its might conquers the 
power of the seas, and in its passion wrecks the might- 
iest fabric of man. We still retain the idea that power 
resides in the rude, rough forces which we see about 
us, which assume to guide and control. We believe in 
the loud and confident and brute force : the soldier or 
the bully is the man for emergencies. 

To remove obstacles, to obtain ends, we look to great 
means, — means which approve themselves to us as ade- 
quate, — slow to learn of experience that the real motive 
power, the power to go back to, the power to rely upon, 
the power adequate, is some small and silent thing, hid 
like the steam in the hold of a vessel, unseen, yet not 
unfelt. Beneficent, permanent influences come not 
with observation. An army may overthrow a city, a 
hurricane waste a country, but behind the army shall 
follow the genial influence of liberty to build again and 



GENTLE INFLUENCES. 



81 



restore, and do what no force shall undo ; and after the 
hurricane shall come the smile of the sun and the 
blessing of the dew, under whose gentle and genial in- 
fluence the waste shall be repaired and the desert 
blossom and be glad. 

Caesar, Alexander, and Napoleon, the often quoted 
types of earthly power, the men of blood and violence, 
have left nothing behind them. Their empire died 
with them ; while. He who would neither strive nor cry 
aloud, who led no armies, who founded no dynasty, has 
to-day a mightier empire than tyrants ever dared aspire 
to. It is a curious fact that Napoleon owned that by 
gentleness Jesus had attained a power which could not 
perish, while all that had been done by him through 
years of blood should waste and perish with him. 

"Were I," says a late writer, "seeking for the 
emblem of an enduring force, I should not select the 
bronze figure of the emperor, with his glass eying the 
fortunes of the battle, but another work of art, called 
'The Light of the World,' in which Christ is repre- 
sented at dusk, in his hand a lantern whose beams fall 
upon his features, and light up his soft, ruddy hair and 
delicate countenance, and make fruit and flower glow 
on the soil near his feet, as, while the darkness gathers 
and the night hovers all around out of the sky, with 
wistful face of infinite tenderness he proceeds with the 
other hand to knock at a cottage door." The dwelling 
and the portal which the painter intended, where are 
they but within, and what power like that empire over 
the soul established by the gentleness of Jesus ? 

Real power, beneficent power, enduring power, comes 
of gentlest things. It is their influence which is irre- 
sistible. 



82 



GENTLE INFLUENCES. 



A man rouses himself against any show of compul- 
sion. The antagonist is waked, he is thrown on the 
defensive. He summons all capacity of resistance, so 
little is gained. Try gentleness, entreaty, persuasion, 
love, the milder influences. No man can resist. He 
may yield sullenly at first, but yield he will and must. 

This fact runs through nature and through man in 
the world, in our intercourse with one another and with 
God. Let us take examples of the power that resides 
in things apparently without power. I cannot do better 
than recite a fable I once met. " There was a gather- 
ing together of creatures, hurtful and terrible to man, 
to name their king. Blight, mildew, darkness, mighty 
waves, fierce winds, will-o'-the-wisps, and shadows of 
grim objects, told fearfully their doings, and preferred 
their claims, none prevailing. But, when evening came 
on, a thin mist curled itself up derisively amid the 
assemblage, and said : ' I gather around a man going to 
his own home, over paths made by his daily footsteps, 
and he becomes at once helpless and tame as a child. 
The lights meant to assist him then betray. You find 
him wandering, or need the aid of other terror to 
subdue him. I am alone confusion to him.' And all 
the assemblage bowed before the mist, and made it 
king, and set it on the brow of many a mountain, 
where it may be often seen to this day." 

Now muster all forces of nature, marshal winds, 
waves, thunders, earthquakes, and though, in their 
quick, terrible march, they make a wild and horrid 
ruin, yet you may better face their power than the 
silent, subtle force of the mist. 

Again, this fleeting, very significant, but not much 



GENTLE INFLUENCES. 



S3 



known "snow power." And I cannot do better than 
quote the words of a writer known everywhere for his 
peculiar ability in such description : " Is there any- 
thing in the world so devoid of all power as a snow- 
flake? It has no life. It is not organized. It is not 
even a positive thing, but is formed negatively, by the 
withdrawal of heat from moisture. It forms in silence, 
and in the obscurity of the radiant ether, far above 
eyesight or hand-reach. It starts earthward, so thin, 
filmy, and unsubstantial that gravitation itself seems at 
a loss to know how to get hold upon it. Therefore, it 
comes down with a wavering motion, half attracted and 
half let alone. And then it rests upon a leaf, or alights 
upon the ground with such a dainty step, so softly and 
quietly that you almost pity its virgin helplessness. 
If you reach out your hand to help it, your very touch 
destroys it. It dies in your palm and departs as a tear. 
If any one should ask what is the most harmless and 
innocent thing on earth, he might be answered, a snow- 
flake. And yet, in its own way of exerting itself, it 
stands among the foremost powers of the earth. When 
it fills the air, the sun cannot shine, the eye becomes 
powerless. Neither hunter nor pilot, guide nor watch- 
man, are any better than blind men. The eagle and 
the mole are on a level of vision. All the kings of the 
earth could not send forth an edict to mankind, say- 
ing, 'Let labor cease.' But this white-plumed light- 
infantry clears out the fields, drives men home from 
the highway, and puts half a continent under ban. It 
is a despiser of old landmarks, and very quietly unites 
all properties, covering up fences, hiding paths and 
roads, and doing in one day a work which engineers 



8 4 



GENTLE INFLUENCES. 



and laborers of the whole earth could not do in 
years. 

"But let the wind arise (itself but the movement of 
soft, invisible particles of air), and how is this peaceful 
seeming of snowflakes changed ! In an instant, the air 
roves. There are fury and spite in the atmosphere. It 
pelts you, and searches you out in every fold and seam 
of your garments. It comes without, a search warrant 
through crack and crevice of your house. It pours 
over hills, and lurks down in valleys or roads and cuts, 
until in a night it has entrenched itself formidably 
against the most expert human strength. For, now 
lying in drifts, it bids defiance to engine and engineer. 

"In a few weeks, another silent force will come forth, 
and a noiseless battle will ensue, in which this new vic- 
torious army of flakes shall be itself vanquished. A 
raindrop is stronger than a snowflake. One by one, the 
armed drops will dissolve the crystals, and let forth the 
spirit imprisoned in them. Descending quickly into 
the earth, the drops shall search the roots and give 
their breasts to their myriad mouths. The bud shall 
open its eye. The leaf shall lift its head. The grass 
shall wave its spear, and the forests hang out their ban- 
ners. How significant is this silent, gradual, but irre- 
sistible power of rain and snow, of moral truth in this 
world! 'For as the rain cometh down, and the snow 
from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth 
the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it 
may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so 
shall my word be, that goeth forth out of my mouth : 
it. shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish 
that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing 
whereto I sent it.' " 



GENTLE INFLUENCES. 



«5 



Leaving the realm of nature, let us come to life. 
What is more quiet, gentle than love, — not love that 
is debased into a passion, — for that is a whirlwind and 
a fire, — but that which burns pure in the heart of man, 
woman, and child ? What is its language ? A glance, 
a tone, a tear. What are its weapons ? Tenderness, 
persuasion, devotion. It may not speak, and only do 
and suffer ; yet it finds its way through the pointed 
armor in which man's heart is sometimes cased. You 
can withstand harshness, ill-treatment, chains, persecu- 
tion, death, but you cannot withstand love. The last 
hope is gone for that man who can. He has slid out 
of the sphere of the human - down into that of the 
demon. The coaxing tenderness of a child, the gentle 
ministrations of a mother, the mild persuasions of a 
wife, can they not twist you and turn you and rule 
you as they will ? Passion could not do it, ridicule 
could not do it, law could not, blows could not ; but a 
kiss, an imploring look, a hand laid quietly upon yours, 
the mere trembling of the lid which foreruns the tear, 
can break the proudest mood and subdue the most 
dogged wilfulness. Strike but the cords of the love- 
harp, and the wildest frenzy of selfishness or passion 
is tamed. Tyrants have been turned from their blood- 
iest purposes, revenge has sheathed its thirsting blade, 
intemperance dashed the cup from its lip, souls that 
were almost lost have been won again to Christ, not 
by any threat or strong beseeching, but by the still, 
silent power of love, by a word almost inaudible, — less 
than that, — by a tone, a motion, a glance, whose pecu- 
liar significance, lost on the bystander, sank into the 
depths of the heart for which it was intended. 



86 



GENTLE INFLUENCES. 



Love is nearer omnipotence than any other human 
attribute, and it is love that makes the omnipotence of 
the divine character. 

Let us go a little out into society, where man is 
not bound to man or to be influenced by this delicate 
sentiment. In social life, who is the strong man, the 
powerful man? The man of position, or of wealth, or 
of ability? Not at all. But the man who stoops to 
the lesser courtesies of life, who despises no little act 
of kindness, but keeps a warm heart, a quick eye, a 
ready hand. You see many men about you who 
rather pride themselves upon their roughness, their 
manly superiority to the trifling amenities of life ; who 
think it derogatory to them to stoop to the little char- 
ities of act and speech. They impress you with a 
sense of the consideration in which they stand with 
themselves, while upon yourself all the bustle and 
assumption of their self-importance are lost. They 
carry no weight with them, win no regard, obtain no 
purpose. On the contrary, he who has a regard for 
what have been called the small, sweet courtesies of 
life lays aside all selfishness, in honor preferring 
another ; quietly stands aside for another's comfort ; 
without a word, surrenders his claim or preference ; is 
systematically, unfeignedly polite ; has a bow, a civility, 
a pleasant word, — those little things which cost so 
little, which yet cost so much, — ready for everybody. 
At home, in the street, in society, he does the thousand 
nameless acts which are always wanting to be done, 
but which so few think it worth while to do. 

Without any large ability or large act or cost, he is 
felt to be a kind man and a useful man, a reliable man ; 



GENTLE INFLUENCES. 



87 



and he wields an influence and obtains a regard that 
no proud, self-sufficient man can ever know. His little 
courtesies take large hold of all ; and men delight to 
come within the sphere of his attraction, and breathe 
the atmosphere in which he moves. They love him for 
what he does, they listen when he speaks, and are 
ready to help him when he suffers. 

Take another instance still less dependent upon per- 
sonal interest and acquaintance. Eloquence is a power. 
And what is eloquence ? Not noise and vehemence and 
effort, not the strained posture and gesture and tone of 
the theatre, but it is the simple, earnest utterance of 
some truth which lives in the heart, burns on the lips, 
glows in the eye, and stamps itself upon the language 
and in the tone. It is not a thing of teachers and 
schools, but a thing of the heart and of the moment. 
What a mighty sway it has ! I have seen men get up, 
and with loud voice and vehement gesture and strong 
assertion work themselves into a sort of frenzy ; and, 
while those who sat by looked on impassive and won- 
dered why all that was done, they toiled as one who 
beat the air and accomplished nothing. 

I have heard one of another stamp, with subdued 
tone and folded hand, but with an earnest look and a 
kindling glow about the eye, say what the heart told 
him to say, and the contagion spread. All ears were 
arrested, all eyes fixed, silence deep and breathless 
filled the place, and every one was lifted up above him- 
self into that divine region into which it was felt that 
he who spoke was leading the way. Eloquence is no 
trick of the speech or the body, no magic of well-tuned 
voice and fine person or a polished manner. It is the 



88 



GENTLE INFLUENCES. 



simple, native conviction of one soul uttering itself to 
the want or apprehension of another. Its word as an 
electric flush thrills through the heart, spreads through 
the land, revolutionizes faiths, opinions, governments, 
laws, upheaves the old foundations of principle and 
habit, and recreates the man, society, and the nation. 

And, last of all, what a power is silence. What so 
mighty as that impalpable, mysterious presence which 
wraps about our own hearts, embraces the night ? It 
is the synonyme of mystery and eternity. The hush of 
the desert, the stillness of the midnight, the muteness 
of grief, the solitude of one's chamber, what power lies 
in these, what appeals come up from their dumb lips ! 

And, then, what terrible power is there in the pauses 
of a storm, the fitful hush waking a fear deeper than 
the tumult. What majestic power in the silence of 
a multitude subdued by some overmastering spirit, 
touched by some great truth, awed by some sad calam- 
ity, or melted and swayed by the sweet music of some 
gifted lips, bound and controlled at one and the same 
moment by one and the same sentiment ! What noble 
power in the silence that submits to insult, that reviles 
not again, — silence that comes of no mean fear, but the 
love of God in the heart. What withering power in 
the silence of scorn ! 

Then, the influences upon character which are deep- 
est and longest and most efficient are not those which 
are made of set purpose, not those of precept, which 
have been driven into us by constant repetition, but 
the silent influences which imperceptibly win our es- 
teem and mould us to their will. We draw near some 
gentle spirit, and at once we feel an attraction and an 



GENTLE INFLUENCES. 



89 



influence, as if some hidden spirit magnet drew us. 
The very air is impregnated with power we cannot 
resist. Word, movement, manner, tone, look, without 
any effort or purpose, throw a nameless charm over us. 
We are better and holier for the contact, and feel that 
we have seen and been near and touched by something 
of the beauty and purity of which the human soul is 
capable. The power of others over us is in the silent, 
indirect influence of character and life. What manner 
of men ought we therefore to be ! 

It is just so God influences us. He does not seek to 
subdue us with awful demonstrations of power; not 
to compel us, but to convince us through the influences 
of love, and lead us by his gifts. His constant influ- 
ences are his silent ones. If he sends thunders from 
Sinai, to man's infancy, it is the dewy stillness and 
beauty of a summer's morning, when the wondering 
crowds hear the lessons of the second dispensation. 
If at times things seem to break away from their divine 
order and harmony and quiet, the re-established law soon 
asserts itself, that still his is the gentler way of love. 
And so Christ coming to our aid, to bring us back to 
God, took no form of antagonism, as he well might, 
backed as he was by all the power of eternity, but the 
simple form of a simple man, the gentle tone and win- 
ning manner of a gentle and loving soul, proving by 
his adoption of this way in the greatest of all works 
that it was the one true way which should be almighty 
to effect the intended purpose. 

The lesson for us is the folly of passion and force, 
the uselessness of that in which the world still trusts. 
The power for us to have and wield is the power that 



90 GENTLE INFLUENCES. 

shall subdue and harmonize all discord within and about 
us, the silent influence of a considerate and gentle 
spirit. The gentle spirit of God moving over chaos 
brought all things into life, beauty, and order ; the 
sweet strains of David's harp loosened the maniac 
monarch's clutch upon his javelin, and he sank back 
calm and at peace ; the word of Jesus hushed sorrow, 
and soothed the demoniac, and put back Peter's impet- 
uous sword into its sheath. If we have ever gained a 
lasting, genuine victory, done a real, abiding good, it 
has been by no great powers, but through the might of 
gentleness in us. So shall the world be in the end 
redeemed. Armies, monarchs, revolutions, must have 
their way. They shall destroy ; but the kingdom of our 
God, the kingdom of spiritual beauty and everlasting 
peace, shall come out of the graces of the soul, which 
attract and win because they are gentle and still. 

February, 1856. 



VIII. 



THE MAN WITHIN. 

" The hidden man of the heart." — I. Peter iii., 4. 

There is an outward man and there is an inward 
man, a man visible and a man invisible, a man of outer 
activity and life and a hidden man of the heart. One 
man other men see, take notice of, judge by. That is 
the daily outward man, the man of speech, of action, of 
expression, the man that is apprehended primarily by 
the senses and is addressed to them, which, in our care- 
less way, we are apt to consider the whole man. From 
what we detect upon the outside, our affection, our 
prejudice, our reason even, draw their inferences; and 
the man becomes to us what they decide him to be. 

The other man is the hidden man of the heart, the 
man that no other sees or can see, the man that no 
other knows or can know. Just as underneath the 
ocean which we see — which is fretted by winds, moved 
by tides, lulled by calms, tossed by storms — there is 
said to be another ocean, whose life finds no expression 
at the surface, so in us all there lies another man, 
the currents and counter-currents of whose life are 
hidden from all mortal knowledge. This is the real 
man, the man of affections, sympathies, aspirations, 
impulses, appetites, motives, the things in which life 
has its root, from which it gets its strength, — the man 
it has pleased God to hide, to fence in from all intrucl- 



9 2 



THE MAN WITHIN. 



ing vision, that there might be one secret, sacred place 
in which the soul, alone with its God, might work out 
the problem of its existence. 

This is God's law, and like all God's laws wise and 
good. Sometimes, we wish that we could take men 
down into the secret places of our hearts, its chambers 
and its galleries, its corridors and niches, and show 
them what indeed we are, what we want, why we fail, 
what we aim at, why we do and why we do not do, how 
we aspire.. We long to be revealed to those who walk 
by our sides, their eyes holden. At times, we weary of 
our isolation, and long to fling wide the doors and bid 
all welcome. Discouraged, misunderstood, suffering, 
we vainly beat at the bars of our prison-house : " Oh, 
that men really knew us as we know ourselves ! Oh, 
that they could read, not these acts so imperfect, so 
strange, so contradictory to ourselves even, but the 
motive that prompts our inmost life, then should we 
have honor and rest." 

But this is only a passing mood. We know that this 
which God has decreed is well. Experience and obser- 
vation unite to prove it to us. In our sober moments, 
we would not, if we could, admit any other into the 
mysteries of the heart. We prefer that the inner life 
should be hid. If God had not veiled it, we should 
upbraid him for his neglect. We will have our hearts 
as the holy of holies, into which no foot shall pass. 
Jealously, we guard them against every approach. 
With pains, we even labor to conceal what men might 
easily know, and knowing would bless us for. We love 
to pass incognito through life ; and when men pene- 
trate ever so little our disguise, read ever so little the 



THE MAN WITHIN. 



93 



secret of our being, we baffle and throw them off the 
scent. Not only those who are worse in their hearts 
than they pass for in life, but those who are better, 
seem actuated by the same desire. The good man 
conceals his best as sedulously as the bad man his 
worst. Neither is willing that the hidden man of the 
heart should be revealed. And there are those who 
perversely put upon the outside that which has no 
place in the heart, who take a pride not merely in con- 
cealing the good, but in affecting the bad which they 
have not. I doubt if this be right. We ought to 
accept any inability God may ordain, not increase it. 
The wilful concealment of the bad or the good is alike 
wrong. I think God meant we should live out our 
inner lives just so far as, under his limitations and 
restrictions, it is possible : where we do not do it, we 
are deceivers. 

There are drawbacks enough of God's selecting and 
imposing. Under the most favorable circumstances, 
the outward man does the inward man great injustice. 
We all, or nearly all, have some infelicity of manner or 
address, some drawback in look or tone, some original 
or hereditary inability, very trifling in itself perhaps, 
which is always saying untrue things of the hidden 
man. Very few are they who can give expression to 
that which they want to, just as they want to. How 
many warm and kindly hearts dwell under dull, prosaic, 
forbidding exteriors, or express themselves in ways and 
words that repel rather than win ? How many hard 
and dry faces, like clock dials which have no hands, 
give no hint of the life within ? How many brave 
spirits lie unguessed within the shrinking and diffi- 



94 



THE MAN WITHIN. 



dent ? How many of earth's noble ones die and make 
no sign, because they cannot master the native in- 
firmity which hides- the inward man. There are bar- 
riers enough to a true self-revealing without our raising 
others. So much of the inner life as we can express 
we ought to express, so much of the hidden man of the 
heart as we can reveal we ought to reveal. For it is by 
showing as much of the hidden man as we may that 
ourselves are made better, it is by seeing the man that 
we are that others are helped, encouraged, or warned. 

It will not be denied that that which we see is the 
lowest and least desirable life. It may at first be 
doubted, but I think it is safe to say, that the hidden 
man of the heart is always better than the visible man. 
There is more faith, more patience, more charity, more 
loyalty to God, more good-will to man, more craving, 
and more hope than ever yet expressed, more actual 
attainment. Beautiful as are many lives we gaze on 
reverently, and perfect as we call them, they are yet 
more beautiful within : the hidden man of the heart is 
nearer to God than his works proclaim. Somebody 
says that the very effort to shape, to embody, to put 
in language our thoughts, L akes something of power 
and purity from them. The willing spirit imperfectly 
utters itself through the weak flesh ; and its sweetest 
songs, its truest devotions, its most earnest yearnings, 
float upward from it, unuttered and unutterable, to the 
Invisible, and not outward by any uttering of the flesh. 
And so it is with the weak man and the bad man. 
Within, he is building better than we know ; and, 
though he fail to fitly frame and firmly build and com- 
pletely finish the temple God would dwell in, who shall 



THE MAN WITHIN. 



95 



say that he has no hope, no inner life which, despite 
instability and failure, God will respect ? 

The man of annoying and desperate selfishness, un- 
derneath, has a better life. His hidden man is a man 
of self-reproach, unrest, resolve. 

The man, cold, proud, stern, who seems to shut out 
wilfully every tenderness, has a hidden man, longing, 
aching, to cast off its mantle, and prove the wealth of 
real life that glows beneath. Approach him rightly, 
and that strong under-current will break through all 
opposition in full, rich overflow. 

The man of wild extravagance and reckless dissi- 
pation, the man who has scoffed at all warning, em- 
bittered the lives dearest to him, the man seemingly 
callous and dead, owns to a hidden man, outraged by 
this life of self, rebuking it, and moving it many times 
mightily toward reform. I doubt if in the dens of 
infamy and vice, amid all the riot and revel of the 
Sunday's debauch, God does not see in each a life 
superior to, loathing, the outward life, a hidden life of 
the heart that could be lifted and redeemed, if we had 
but a voice like that of Jesus, which could penetrate 
through the overlying mass of trespasses and sins, but 
a spirit like his ready to encourage and to help. If 
we could but take the light and the bread from heaven 
where most they are wanted, and where they ought to 
go, we should then do something toward establishing 
firmly that sorely beset man of the heart, something 
toward revealing to the individual the man that he is, 
and help other men to know the life that exists in all, 
though it may fail to work. We should encourage and 
confirm it, and enable it to finish its course with joy. 



THE MAN WITHIN. 



It is well to remember how constantly the Saviour 
noticed and encouraged the hidden man of the heart. 

It is not the word, the deed, the expression of the 
outer man, of which he takes notice, responds to, but 
the condition of the hidden man of the heart, whether 
by miracle, gift, or the power of his own insight. He 
knew what was in man. It was the inner life, state, 
want, inquiry, to which he addressed himself ; and they 
to whom he spoke felt that he knew them not as men. 
Their thought had been read, and what they really 
needed had been said. As you read the record, many 
times his answers seem irrelevant. What have they to 
do with the inquiry ? Nothing. But, with the interior 
condition that prompted the inquiry, everything. He 
tells just what the hidden man of the heart wanted to 
know, but dared not ask ; needed to know, without 
knowing what it was he needed. It is not the question 
of the woman of Samaria, or of Nicodemus, or of 
Martha that he answers, not the woman, the Nico- 
demus, the Martha who had spoken, but the hidden 
desires of their hearts. And, as he made these feel 
his knowledge and his love, so he made his enemies 
feel his power, dragging out before others, to the full 
light of the day, to be gazed upon and despised, the 
hidden man of the heart, sending cunning scribe and 
hypocritical Pharisee and crafty ruler again and again 
from him, stripped of every disguise, the whole inner 
man laid bare. 

And this action of his may well lead us to two 
special, practical thoughts. 

I. It is the hidden man of the heart decides what we 
are. The outward man cannot do that, though we too 



THE MAN WITHIN. 



97 



frequently measure attainments, and make our awards 
by it. You will hear in th'e world men rated by the 
outside. That is the world's criterion. A man of pre- 
tence or presence, of studied obtrusion and notoriety, 
of outward profession, carries the palm. Words and 
deeds, things that can be seen and handled, — these are 
the elements of man's opinion of man, the coin of our 
daily currency. But these are not things that make 
the man. The man is not the man outward, but the 
man inward. It is thought, purpose, desire, the things 
of the heart, hidden there, that mould the man, make 
or mar him. Out of the heart, the Saviour says, come 
all things evil and all things good. His own work was 
with the heart. For the things without, he cared noth- 
ing. For man's advancement in the world, he had 
nothing directly to give or to suggest. He has left no 
rules, no examples, for outer man. The one thing with 
him was the heart, and the man that lay hidden there. 
He found it bruised, forsaken, crushed; and he raised 
it up, healed and clothed it, revealed it to itself, its then 
degradation and its possible holiness. 

That which he said and showed to those of his own 
time, he says and shows to us. All our life, all our 
hope, depend upon the state of the heart. If it is all 
well there, if pure and holy thoughts abide there, if 
high and noble resolves are formed there, if gentle 
charities and kind affections abound there, if the virtues 
and graces cluster there, if among these move a filial 
faith, and a serene trust renewed to the inward man 
day by day, we have the all that can be needed for the 
true life, and the outward man must bear witness to it. 
The heart cannot have these things in its treasury, and 



THE MAN WITHIN. 



the life be wholly low, sordid, and false. The good 
tree, Jesus says, cannot bring forth evil fruit. Let us 
remember and act upon the converse of that declara- 
tion. 

2. And, again, it is the hidden man that God sees, and 
by that he judges. Men judge by acts. God makes 
no account of them. He strikes at once at the motive. 
Men punish crimes, deeds, expressions. God punishes 
intentions, thoughts, desires ; and, more, he strikes the 
balance, impossible to man, between the ever-renewed 
alternation, the struggle between the good and bad. It 
is a startling thought, when we give ourselves really to 
it, that there is an eye can read more surely than we 
can ourselves every prompting of appetite, every mov- 
ing of will, every longing of desire, an eye which sees 
passions petted, habits encouraged, thoughts invited, 
which we dare not let men know of, which we gaze 
upon with shame ourselves, which we submit to, even 
with a nameless horror, while still we hold them. It is 
a startling thought that God not only sees all that the 
hidden man of the heart is, but that he makes up his 
judgment from what he knows that to be. Disguises, 
with pain and loathing worn before men, subterfuges 
stooped to while all the better life indignantly rebels, 
hypocrisies riveted upon the soul, armor of proof before 
men, — what are these before God, who looks straight 
down and clean through all, and knows just what lies 
at the deep springs of life in the heart ? What a mad 
hope that is which men will still cling to, that some- 
how or other they are going to deceive God, and escape 
his judgment or palliate his justice. It will be a terri- 
ble retribution to many, when the cowering man of the 



THE MAN WITHIN. 



99 



heart shall be dragged forth and judged ; as it will be 
a joy unspeakable to many, when the voice shall say, 
" Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom 
prepared for you from the foundation of the world." 

And now two questions come up, which need an 
answer, — an answer clear and full. What is the hidden 
man of the heart in us ? Is it such as pleases us, as sat- 
isfies our idea of life, such as we are willing to have as 
our record and our witness ? In the past has it been all 
that we could desire ? In the present have we nothing 
to fear, and is the future only radiant with promise ? 
No one who knows the hidden man of his heart can 
feel wholly at ease, content. Some shadow rests upon 
the brightest life, some weakness inheres in the strong- 
est spirit, something done or undone makes the best 
to mourn. The past has waste in it, ingratitudes, 
neglects. It has heeded too much the many voices 
which call from without, and heard too seldom the one 
voice which speaks in whisper out of the silent deep 
within, and down from the silence above. The present 
stands upon that past, and it is imperfect ; but it is the 
divine now, the moment God gives for the renewal and 
for toil. Let us seize and use it, and so answer by our 
future living our second question, — What ought the 
hidden man of the heart to be ? Let us give ourselves 
in the fear of God, and as accountable to him, instantly 
and reverently, to a much neglected work. Let us go 
down to the bottom of our hearts, and begin there, 
among the hidden things, the things we think too little 
of, those of which are life's issues. Let us have noth- 
ing within but what is pure and noble in thought and 
purpose. Let every spirit of evil be exorcised, and the 



100 



THE MAN WITHIN. 



hidden man of the heart be formed after the image of 
the Son of God. That is a glorious work to which we 
are called. Do we think enough of the privilege of 
being permitted to toil in the same way and for the 
same end that Jesus did ? Do we realize what it is to 
be worthy to inherit with him glory and honor and im- 
mortality ? 

In all this crowd of men and women moving so 
variously about us, in all this character written and 
acted, that which appears is but as the small dust of 
the balance. Underneath the man seen is the man 
unseen, the hidden man of the heart, very unlike, often 
better than the other. The man we thrust before 
others for their observation, the man we put forth to do 
life's work, to stand in its counting-rooms, exchanges, 
in its halls of legislation, in the daily walk of common 
life, is not the man of the heart, but a man for the 
place and the occasion, — a man imperfect, a man 
expressing only in part and feebly, perhaps falsely, 
what the true man is. The true man lies hid, silently 
at work, where no eye sees, working more nobly than 
fancy has painted or poet dreamed. For it has work- 
ing with it all that is good, the whole host of holy 
influences, the whole majesty of God and all that Jesus 
conquered. You may go wherever man has gone, and 
you shall see about you everywhere, among barbarous 
as among civilized, on the islands as the continents, the 
marvels of human skill set up as trophies for the future 
to look on and admire, and the generations, as they 
come and go, gaze and marvel. But there is no such 
achievement of man, — and by and by men will see and 
own it, — no such trophy, nothing so worthy of admira- 



THE MAN WITHIN. 



101 



tion, as the heart in man that has withstood the wiles 
of sense and self, has borne the burden through life's 
dust and heat, has conquered, as he who was more 
than conqueror did. It is the perfect work of the per- 
fect man, a life that is hid with Christ in God. 



Dec. 18, 1858. 



IX. 



NONE BUT CHRIST. 

" Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life." — 
John vi., 68. 

Jesus had said and done many things conflicting so 
strangely with the hopes of the Jews that many who 
had hitherto been ardent followers and friends now 
turned away. Desirous of drawing from his disciples 
some confession of their feelings, he asks, "Will ye 
also go away ? " Peter, always first, answers impul- 
sively yet sincerely : " Lord, to whom shall we go ? 
Thou hast the words of eternal life." 

This assertion of the disciple is our assurance. The 
words of Jesus lead to eternal life. They are the 
words of truth which shall not pass, though heaven 
and earth perish. They are the foundation of our faith 
and hope. They give the will of God as concerns man. 
They show us our duty, they point us our way. They 
are the sufficient and only foundation on which we may 
raise the superstructure of a clear belief and a holy 
character. If, however, we examine the predominating 
faith of Christendom, the tenets which men make the 
separating points between their various theologies, the 
doctrines which they claim as the distinctive doctrines 
of the gospel, we shall find them neither stated in nor 
defended by the language of Jesus. We shall not find 



NONE BUT CHRIST. IO3 

him occupied in establishing the things the establish- 
ing of which his followers have held of the first impor- 
tance. We shall discover nowhere the foundations of 
church establishment, no nicely drawn distinctions, no 
elaboration of creed or decree. It is a most singular 
fact that, though we have a faith called " Christian," 
yet the foundations of the religion professed by nine- 
tenths of Christendom are laid in the language of the 
Old Testament or of Paul. The faith of Christendom 
is not Christian, but Pauline. Not Christ himself is 
the corner-stone, but Paul. It is not the simple "truth 
as it is in Jesus," but the perplexed truth as it is in 
Paul. Creeds, catechisms, churches, are started from, 
defended by, the Epistles, not the Gospels. Proof 
texts, the sharp and ingenious weapons of theology, are 
not the clear, brief, broad assertions of Jesus, but the 
more hurried, confused, and doubtful though glowing 
sentences of the apostle. You will find the texts from 
most pulpits on Sunday, certainly if the discourse be 
in any way a theological one, taken from the Epistles, 
and the doctrine illustrated and enforced by reference 
to the prophecies of the Old Testament rather than 
the gospel of the New.* You will be surprised to find 
how little reliance in past theological controversies has 
been placed on the words of Jesus ; how men have kept 
from them, as if conscious that they would not counte- 
nance such strange and bitter perversions. For one 
text from him, arrayed in proof of the Trinity or the 
more commonly received doctrine of the atonement, 



* Westminster Catechism supported by 1,200 texts, 624 Old Testament, 811 apostles, 
235 Gospels. Justification by faith, 1 from Gospels, 42 from other parts. Original sin, 2 
from Gospels, 85 from other pans. 



104 



NONE BUT CHRIST. 



you will find a dozen from Paul ; and you will feel that 
the stress is thrown rather upon these last, that the 
testimony of Christ is thrust aside in order that the 
apostle may speak. The argument depends, the proof 
hangs, upon his word. He is the great head of the 
Church. His words, imperfectly understood, have 
given faith to the world. His Epistles, which even 
Peter found it hard to comprehend, have been made the 
lamp to men's feet. His thoughts, wrested from their 
sequence and place, have been used in fragments, and 
out of such incongruous material has been reared a 
fabric as unlike the religion of Jesus as the matchless 
and mighty dome of St. Peter's Cathedral is unlike the 
wigwam of the Oregon savage. Had not Paul written 
letters, had not the early collectors of sacred writings 
put them side by side with the writings of the evangel- 
ists, had we only the Gospels, we should have to-day a 
very different faith and a much higher attainment of 
holiness, a broader charity, and a clearer hope. This 
is certainly very curious. One would have said that 
over and above all other witness would have been the 
witness who came direct from God, and was himself 
expressly the commissioned teacher. One would have 
said that all doubts and difficulties would have been 
at once and solely referred to him for solution; that, 
when he left anything, there it was to be left; that 
humble faith would neither go beyond nor stop this 
side of him. Those are memorable words of Peter, 
"Thou hast the words of eternal life," and their appli- 
cation is as broad as eternity itself. But men, in the 
hot contest of opinion, have forgotten them. They 
have not found the gospel to be an armory of such 



NONE BUT CHRIST. 



105 



weapons as they needed. The graceful and simple 
truth, as it fell from the lips of the Saviour, has not 
suited the wisdom of the world, has not answered the 
purpose of prejudice and passion, trie strife for triumph 
more than truth. A faith to live by has not been so 
much their desire as a faith to establish and make tri- 
umphant, — not Christ's faith, but their faith, — the faith 
of their sect or church. The apostles needed no other 
gospel than that which fell from the lips of the Master. 
It sufficed their purpose. It was the great antagonist 
of heathenism. It was that which spoke from Mars 
Hill, which startled the profligate Corinthians, which 
made its converts even within the gates of the imperial 
city. It was that which turned the world upside down. 

The word they preached was just that simple word 
which now meets us on the printed page of the evan- 
gelists. They took all men back to Him from whom 
they had themselves received the words of eternal life. 
Even Paul, who now stands so strangely above Christ, 
who is now so strangely quoted against Christ, never 
taught any other gospel. Little did he dream, when he 
poured out his full heart in rapid letters to the various 
feeble churches he had founded, — letters written in 
the intervals of travel or of pressing business, to meet 
their immediate wants, adapted to their then condition, 
— little did he think that these, written as all letters are 
written, would one day be found in a holy book side by 
side with the life of his Master, and by many, under the 
pernicious theory of a plenary verbal inspiration, held 
to contain other and greater truth than that delivered 
by that Master himself. Could he have foreseen this, I 
think he would have put that hand which wrote them in 



io6 



NONE BUT CHRIST. 



the fire, and held it there, and watched it consume with 
a more than Roman courage, rather than it should have 
been the means of depriving his Saviour of one iota of 
that honor which is only his. Those letters were never 
meant as bodies of divinity, never were written as care- 
fully digested treatises, never were intended to be read 
outside the little knot of believers at Corinth or Ephe- 
sus, never were expected to survive the people and the 
occasion for which they were prepared. How strange 
that he who so earnestly and eloquently pleaded with 
the Corinthians, because some were of Paul and some 
of Apollos, to the forgetting of Christ, should, in these 
latter days, not only divide the sceptre with him, but 
virtually be regarded as above him ! I sometimes wish 
Paul had never written an Epistle. We should have 
been great losers thereby. We should not have known 
how large a heart was in him, and how meekly that 
great intellect was bowed before that faith in Christ, 
and how completely that noble spirit became under it 
as a little child. We should have wanted some deep 
and glowing utterances of love and faith, some stirring 
exhortations, some pungent rebukes, some liftings into 
a purer atmosphere than this ; and all this would have 
made a void indeed. Yet so perverted have been some 
words of his, so unduly exalted some of his opinions, so 
have men mangled his language and mistaken his pur- 
pose, that sometimes, for the simple truth's sake, I 
could wish we had only the four Gospels for our New 
Testament. As exponents of the character and faith 
of the men, as showing the condition and position of 
believers of that day, as containing much for believers 
of all times, I prize these letters of Paul as I do those of 



NONE BUT CHRIST. 



107 



Peter and John and James. And so long as we regard 
them as only letters of men to men upon topics then 
immediately pressing, so long as we consider them as 
separated by an immense and deep and broad gulf, 
never to be bridged over from the words of Jesus, so 
long honor be to them. Valuable are they as the words 
of earnest, living men, — men who had seen the Lord, — 
but their place is subordinate, and they must always be 
kept to it. The words of eternal life are alone with 
Christ. He is alone the true and living way. To me, 
the centre and support of faith is the language of the 
Saviour. Amid all the confusion of sects and jargon 
of theology, I find repose and assurance there. Bewil- 
dered and confused by the assertions and arguments 
of men, almost doubting my own belief when I see it 
so confidently assailed and put down by others, it is 
unspeakably refreshing to be able to go back to Christ, 
and say, as Peter said, "Thou hast the words of eternal 
life." More and more, I tire of controversy and divi- 
sions among men, the skilful fence of human prejudice 
and wit. Waste time, waste words, waste ingenuity, 
waste temper are they, obscuring, not clearing, the 
truth, the heaping up of sound rather than the advanc- 
ing of the cause of Christ. My one thought is, "What 
does Jesus say ? " He was of God commissioned. On 
him was the spirit poured. I find in his life and doc- 
trine no basis for the stupendous theological and eccle- 
siastical systems which have overawed the world, and 
I unhesitatingly reject them. To me, they are human 
only. I cannot conceive of Jesus as a Catholic or a 
Calvinist, as a Churchman or even as a Unitarian. I 
find in his gospel no elaborate ritual, no specified 



io8 



NONE BUT CHRIST. 



church government, no theology, no accurately ex- 
pressed creed, squared clipped, and cold. All these 
things have been after-thoughts, and they are human. 
It is no arrogance in me to deny them. I base my 
faith on Christ. Some men may think it a narrow and 
insufficient basis, that so I cut myself off from vital 
truth, that so I wilfully blind myself to great and 
solemn necessities of faith. Some will say that I must 
go for substance of doctrine to those who came after 
Christ. I have but one answer and but one hope. It 
is the answer of Peter, and the hope that grows out of 
it : " Thou hast the words of eternal life." When Paul 
follows Christ, I will follow Paul. When he goes "be- 
yond or contradicts him, or rather when men say that 
he does, I will leave him and follow only Jesus, to whom 
God alone gave the clear truth, in whom alone of all 
may we put implicit confidence. What faith I have 
shall rest on Christ and on none other. To me, the 
Gospels are the way of life, high over all revelations, 
the anchor to my soul, sure and steadfast. 

Take a subject like that of the atonement : a matter 
which seems so simple and plain, so long as you keep 
to the words of Jesus, becomes unintelligible so soon as 
it is mixed up with human theories, supported by frag- 
ments of sentences from the words of Paul. I think 
time, talent, and - temper have already been wasted 
upon it, and much more probably will be. Jealous- 
ies have been excited, hard thoughts have arisen, and 
friendships grown cold ; and an injury has been done to 
the spirit of Christ's religion, far outweighing any good 
which can arise from discussion of any topic of belief. 
To me, it seems a useless war of words, which would 



NONE BUT CHRIST. 



IO9 



never have arisen, had men only gone to Christ as the 
fountain-head of religious truth, which might be settled 
at once now, if they would make his words the umpire, 
and not attempt to go beyond them. We never should 
have had this theory and conflict but for a mistransla- 
tion of a word of Paul. The same word everywhere else 
translated reconciliation is once translated atonement. 
If anything is clear and simple, it seems to me it is 
this, that Christ came into the world to save sinners. 
Nowhere does he say anything of substitution or the 
necessity of doing anything that it may be right or safe 
for God to forgive. Nowhere does he say that his death 
is necessary to constitute a just ground for the forgive- 
ness of those who repent. Acting as God's representa- 
tive and in his spirit, he freely forgives those who come 
to him upon the sole condition of repentance ; and when 
he comes to speak of divine forgiveness, of what sort 
it is, of its nature and action, he, simply relates the par- 
able of the Prodigal Son. All my interest in the sub- 
ject begins, centres, and ends there. Of the thousand 
questions that may be asked, I am content to remain 
in ignorance. They are conceits and delusions of in- 
tellect and curiosity, not the legitimate demands of 
faith. I may easily make them matters of intense in- 
terest, and stake my happiness and faith upon some 
solution of them ; but, as a sinner, the only thing really 
of interest, the only thing I can know, is that, as Christ 
is true, my sin will be forgiven of God, as the conse- 
quence of my repentance and return to him. That is 
all I care to know, it is all I ought to know. To that 
repentance and return, I ought to lend all my energies 
rather than allow my thoughts to be frittered away 



no 



NONE BUT CHRIST. 



upon things started by human ingenuity, or growing 
misunderstood, out of some phrase or word of Paul 
speaking or writing to some Roman or Jew, who was to 
be approached through the medium of his old preju- 
dices and education, to whom language and arguments 
were to be addressed wholly inappropriate and unintel- 
ligible to us. I do not think the simple words of Jesus 
could for a moment bear any other construction than 
that God forgives when man repents. Forgiveness is 
an act of divine mercy, and not an act of barter, in 
which a something else has been accepted as an offset 
to the act of pardon. The parable asserts that much, 
and closes with the welcome given at the return. That 
ought to be the faith, and the sufficient faith, of all. 
Where Christ leaves the matter, we ought to be con- 
tent to leave it. As I read it, I rejoice that there is 
such a parable upon which we may fall back after wad- 
ing through the subtleties of thought and language, 
more nice than wise, in which the plain word of Christ 
and the loving purpose of God have been shrouded. As 
I read it, I wonder that men who have that word should 
ask for anything more, and in their discussions so sel- 
dom allude to it. I know there is a great deal that 
Christ does not say. His silence is perhaps as impor- 
tant a part of his gospel as his speech. He says just 
enough to make us wish to know more, and yet just 
what he says is the essential thing ; and what he con- 
ceals, however pleasant or interesting or seemingly 
serviceable, is not essential. There is a deep purpose 
in all this, and we ought to respect it. Had it been re- 
spected, instead of libraries groaning under theological 
text books, and religion rent by conflicting words and 



NONE BUT CHRIST. 



Ill 



opinions, we should have had a large and broad and 
free and united Church, embracing all, and a world very 
much farther advanced in the fundamental necessities 
of faith and charity. It is not essential to know how 
God can forgive the sinner, without some penalty or 
some equivalent for a violated law: that is not our 
concern. The only essential, the only thing that con- 
cerns us, is that God does forgive, when we forsake the 
evil and do the good. So much Christ says ; and, if he 
is faithful and true, that is all that is to be said. All 
other questions should be left, while the soul bends 
itself to the securing of the divine pardon. We do not 
get any nearer the truth, do not withdraw the veil, by 
going to the Epistles, taking some disjointed word or 
phrase, and building it up into an argument for this or 
that view of the atonement. At best, that is only Paul's 
view. If Paul says it was necessary that Christ should 
die before God could consistently forgive, then Paul 
says what Christ did not say. If true, that is an essen- 
tial. Consistently, Christ could not have been silent. 
The parable would have represented the father as say- 
ing: " You have offended against my law. Your re- 
pentance is not enough. I must have some satisfaction 
before it can be safe or right to forgive you. Wait 
here till I find your elder brother, and see if he is will- 
ing to bear the penalty. If so, I receive you again to 
my home, and my arms and my love. If not, depart 
from me back to your husks." Could the Saviour have 
been justified in omitting some such conclusion to his 
parable, if the belief built on Paul is the truth ? Not 
that I believe Paul ever had any such faith, but that 
men have based such a faith upon what he has said. 



112 



NONE BUT CHRIST. 



Silence here would have been culpable in Jesus. He 
would have bequeathed us a delusion rather than the 
words of life : he would have led us into darkness 
rather than showed us the light. His silence is very 
remarkable ; but it is always the sharp limit between the 
complete essential truth and the unessential accom- 
paniments of the truth, between what the soul would 
like to know and what it is of moment that it should 
know, between what God chooses to keep to himself 
and what he considers as the broad essentials of salva- 
tion. There are never any waste words with him. 
The truth, so much as man needs to know, the truth, 
so much as man needs to attain, the truth, so much as 
man requires for his work, — that is all. It is simply, 
clearly stated, and there it is left. Over all the rest, 
the silence which is from eternity, which, despite all 
men's searching and striving, shall be to eternity, is 
kept. The assigned limits of Infinite Wisdom it were 
wise in man to accept and respect. 

What can be more grand than a faith built upon the 
simple words of Christ ? Is it not Christ's faith, — the 
faith that made him what he was ? How far above 
all decisions of councils and churches and synods and 
sects it is ! They have built up stupendous hierarchies. 
They have spread out faith over a large surface, made 
it embrace many and minute things, and imposed it 
upon multitudes. Yet with all its seeming, when you 
come to compare it with that faith built in the heart 
and life of Christ, you feel how shallow and unworthy 
it is. You see what and how much has been done by 
going away from the words of Christ, and how unlike 
is prevalent Christianity in its tone and deed to the 



NONE BUT CHRIST. 



113 



spirit of him, the Master. What Christianity needs 
is to retrace its way to the simple elements of faith as 
laid down by him, to abandon all human adjuncts and 
inventions, and sit at his feet in the humble attitude of 
Mary. What each one of us wants is to abase the 
pride of his intellect, stifle the rebellions of prejudice, 
abandon theories and speculations and decrees, and 
take the simple page of the gospel, the words of Christ, 
and without any other alloy of any other mind, prophet 
or apostle, saint or sect, construct for himself a faith. 
No backward glance after a type, no forward-looking 
for a fulfilment, no help sought anywhere of any. The 
corner-stone of faith is Christ, not Paul or Isaiah. The 
building can only be fitly framed together, can only 
grow into a compact and goodly temple, when he is the 
foundation and not another, when he and not another 
supplies the joints. There cannot be a thorough Chris- 
tian church or a simple Christian character until we 
have winnowed our theology and our faith, and sepa- 
rated the chaff which is of man from the wheat out of 
which is to be made the bread of life. 

Do not suppose that, in exalting the words of Christ, 
I deny the value of the words of Paul. Christ was 
God's Son, and had the words of eternal life. Paul 
was an apostle, a man of clear intellect, warm heart, 
resolute purpose, and ardent faith, yet only and always 
a man, mistaken and weak as other men. Never did 
he expect his word would be exalted to the side of that 
of Christ, or that his letters would be bound in the 
same precious vo^me with the life of the Redeemer, 
and be held equally sacred and important. To Christ 
I go, and him I believe. He has the words of eternal 



ii4 



NONE BUT CHRIST. 



life. To Paul I go just as I would to any other man of 
talent and culture and opportunity. I do not go behind 
Christ; but I go behind Paul, and weigh his word by 
the word of Christ, and accept it only so far as it 
agrees with what the Master has said before. This is 
the true way, not the way of the majority who accept 
the whole Scriptures as on one uniform level, each 
writer of just so much weight, of just such inspira- 
tion as every other; but this is the way of scholars, of 
the candid, and, when the effects of education and prej- 
. udice have passed, it will be seen to be the way of com- 
mon-sense. There are many great truths in the Epis- 
tles, many which one at once recognizes as kin with 
the truths of the Gospels. There are many things hard 
to be understood, many blind things ; and it is these, 
and not the simple and plain, which have done the mis- 
chief and turned men away from the plain way, — these, 
and not the simple and plain, which men bring forward 
and contend about, and make fundamental and con- 
struct doctrines and sects out of, — these which have 
filled dungeons, fed the stake, deluged the world with 
blood, and maddened men with hate, and to-day divide 
and cripple the Church, and perpetuate prejudice and 
ill-will among the sects. This is neither treating Christ 
with respect nor the apostles with respect. It is playing 
tricks with our own wit. It is making the dark places 
obscure the light. It is setting aside the sure word 
for an uncertainty. It is interpreting Christ by Paul 
rather than Paul by Christ, making the scholar above 
the Master, the disciple above his Loj-d. In the course 
of one's own thought or reading, he will find very much 
to perplex him. That is inevitable. So many things 



NONE BUT CHRIST. 



115 



are asserted that one soon gets puzzled. It never need 
be long however, only long enough to turn to the words 
of Jesus. What the compass is to the helmsman when 
the mist shuts him in upon the sea are the words of 
Jesus to the soul befogged and befooled by the philoso- 
phies of sects and schools. They are the words of 
life ; and he who steers by them must avoid shoals and 
rocks, and enter the appointed haven. Well shall it be 
for us individually and for the great cause of the truth, 
if we shall throw aside whatever is more or less than 
the word of Christ, and have the sure faith of Peter 
that there is none other, to whom we can go ; for none 
other has the words of eternal life. 

As I understand it, friends, it is the proud distinction 
of Unitarianism that it alone of all the sects builds 
upon Jesus Christ, his words, his spirit, his life. We 
alone have the single stone Christ Jesus at the head 
of oar corner. Not the Old Testament, not Paul or 
Cephas, not tradition of the Father, not council, synod,- 
creed, pope, bishop, or presbyter, not anything of any 
man's devising, not any opinion or dogma about this, 
that, or the other, but on Christ alone, and his words 
of eternal life, we take our stand. What ot^ier sect 
does the same ? What one creed can you find expressed 
in gospel language, indeed sanctioned by gospel spirit ? 
You cannot twist the Gospels into the word " Trinity " : 
they utterly refuse to do it. With the Gospels in your 
hands, you would never dream of the popular doctrine 
of the atonement. From the Gospels, you could never 
deduce the theory of the fall and of man's reprobate 
nature, and out of them you cannot draw the popular 
idea of regeneration ; and only by the baldest servility 



n6 



NONE BUT CHRIST. 



to the letter, and contradicting the word that " flesh 
and blood cannot enter" the future kingdom of God, 
can you 'find the theory of physical hell torments in 
brimstone and flame. The living words of the eternal 
gospel give no sanction or refuge to the faith preached 
in Christendom, so hostile to that once delivered to the 
saints. 

The religion of to-day is not the Christian religion ; 
and, whatever else may be builded upon it, the kingdom 
of the Redeemer so will never come. The Gospels 
alone are the sufficient guide and way into that. They 
are corner and buttress, they are foundation and turret 
cap, they are spirit and life. What they say is simple 
and plain. What they tell of God and man, of sin 
and salvation, of duty and of destiny, who runs may 
read. To forward the simple truths of Christ, and not 
the confused dogmas of men, Unitarianism exists and 
toils, watches, prays, and waits. What Luther said of 
the Church is pre-eminently true of us. " The Church 
heareth none but Christ." 



June 29, 1873. 



X. 



SEASONS OF QUIET. 

" A place which was named Gethsemane." — Mark xiv., 32. 

There is a little spot just across the Brook Kedron, 
under the Mount of Olives, which has a history. It is 
known as the Garden of Gethsemane, a name peculiarly 
sacred to us, which we never mention except with a 
something of tenderness. The name originally, liter- 
ally, means simply the place of oil-presses. It was 
there that the gathered olives were brought and there 
pressed. How circumstances change and ennoble 
names! This" is all we know about it. Three of the 
evangelists allude to it, only two of them giving it a 
name, and none of them stopping to enlighten the cu- 
riosity or faith of an inquiring world. 

For some cause, probably its seclusion, near the city 
and yet apart from its bustle, it became a favorite re- 
sort with the Saviour. It was there, many times, he 
withdrew with his disciples, in hours of more intimate 
communion, when he turned aside from contention with 
scribe and Pharisee, and endeavored to explain himself 
and his word to his chosen companions. In this, he 
was hardly doing more than following the custom of 
the times. The rabbi, the Jewish teacher, had his 
chosen place of instruction and intercourse; and here, 
uninterrupted, he could impress himself upon the minds 



n8 



SEASONS OF QUIET. 



of those who were not only his pupils, but a sort of 
intermediate class, between himself and the people, 
through whom he made himself known to and felt by 
the common mind. The philosopher, of Greece gath- 
ered around him the young men who joined themselves 
to him. They had a chosen place for meeting ; and 
the shaded avenues near Athens, where Plato taught, 
are as much connected with his philosophy as Geth- 
semane with our faith. So there was nothing peculiar 
in the selection by Jesus of a special band of pupils or 
disciples, or of a quiet place of resort where he might 
have them all to himself for uninterrupted communion 
and instruction, where questions might be asked and 
answered, parables, purposely left dark to the unbeliev- 
ing, explained, and the innermost life and purpose of 
the Master laid bare before the pupils. There is not a 
pleasanter picture in the range of gospel history than 
that suggested by an evangelist, who speaks of Jesus 
as withdrawing from the angry discussions and troubles 
of the day, and quietly, at its close, explaining to the 
disciples the things which had confused them, which 
he refused to make plain to his captious questioners. 
Gethsemane became endeared to both Master and dis- 
ciple by such meetings and unfoldings. They so drew 
nearer to each other and to him, and were made to feel 
that he was not the great, mysterious Being to them 
that he was to others, but their loving friend as well 
as Master and Teacher. The effect produced upon 
them is evident. They never feared to ask him any 
questions, expected to have light thrown upon dark 
things in their moments of privacy. But Gethsemane 
was not merely a place to which Jesus resorted with his 



SEASONS OF QUIET. 



II 9 



disciples. No place so likely to have witnessed those 
vigils of which we have vague hints, which seem to 
have held so important a part in the inner life of the 
Master. When at Jerusalem, more than ever must he 
have craved and sought these seasons of solitude, 
which seem always to be forerunners of some new, 
more arduous duty, some brave exposition of truth, 
some rarer exhibition of power, some completer act of 
self-surrender. For it was at Jerusalem that his chief 
trials came, that his most earnest testimony was borne, 
that the rare heights and depths of his submission and 
endeavor were touched. In the country, he had com- 
parative quiet, found warm friends, willing ears, honest 
hearts, ready followers. Jews of Jerusalem followed 
him there to poison the minds of the people, to counter- 
act an influence they felt to be hostile to theirs ; but 
the real people of the country believed and loved him, 
and his enemies gained little. In the city was his hard 
work ; and when weary, depressed, longing for rest, for 
self-communion, and that nearness of God which seems 
to have come to him peculiarly, as it does to us, when 
alone, it was the near quiet of that place, already 
consecrated by sweet intercourse with his chosen 
friends, that ministered to and refreshed him. You 
who have toiled and suffered, who in perils and sorrows 
have felt how the noise and presence of life grate on 
your spirit, who have found some hallowed spot, — spot 
hallowed by some dear memory, sacred as the resting- 
place of some cherished love, to which you turn with 
yearning, in which you find the heaven not only drop- 
ping low to your trial, but opening to your faith, — you 
who know the refreshing and hope that spring from the 



120 



SEASONS OF QUIET. 



quiet and seclusion of such spot, who go back to your 
burdens, your duties, your fears, as if touched afresh 
with consecrating fire from heaven, who find your tears 
wiped, your sorrow soothed, your trust renewed, and 
your way, however steep, more tolerable, — may know 
somewhat of the spirit in which Jesus sought that spot, 
somewhat of the power and peace which went out from 
it : you will realize how large a part it played in his un- 
recorded history, and how dear it 'was. 

There was a change in the life of Jesus. Its days of 
action, of charitable deed, of friendly intercourse, were 
over. His work was done. Life's busy scenes were 
closing behind him. No more in the temple should 
men hear his words of wisdom. Not again should the 
crouching sinner meet his eye of pity, and depart for- 
given. Never more should terrified parent cry to him 
to save his child, or weeping widow or sister embrace 
again the restored lost. Never more should the dwell- 
ers in Galilee watch for and rejoice at his coming. 
Not again, in the hush of day, should the friends meet 
at the old trysting-place, and talk over the things that 
they heard and ask of what they failed to comprehend. 
The short earthly career of the Son of God was fin- 
ished. Clouds and darkness and terror shut down 
heavily about him. One of his own was gone out to 
betray him for a paltry pittance. The bold, confident 
man, who just now had promised to die with him, was 
already sleeping at his watch, and would soon deny that 
he knew him. Gethsemane, the place of quiet, is now 
the place of struggle ; and he who had found there be- 
fore only peace, in a more than mortal agony, seeks 
peace again. A terrible strife it is. We cannot 



SEASONS OF QUIET. 



fathom it. We stand dumb before that simple record 
of great drops of sweat, as it were of blood. We bow 
subdued and silent in presence of that last conflict. 
Theology tries to explain, grows quarrelsome over it. 
Faith is humbled and silent. The disciples sleep. As 
if craving sympathy, Jesus turns to them ; and then, as 
if rebuked, he turns to God. Anon, he seeks them, 
and then a^ain turns back to God. We shall never 
know the mystery of that conflict until all mysteries 
are unveiled. You who have suffered, who have had 
terrible crises in life, do you not understand something 
of this grasping at help from man, and then, because 
of baffling rather than of faith, turning to God, — turn- 
ing again from God, because he was not quick to give 
what you desired, or gave only what you were not ready 
to receive, to turn again, craving, yearning, back to 
God ? That is a very human struggle which Gethsem- 
ane that night witnessed. 

There is a change again in Gethsemane. The full 
moon looks down clearly into the garden, and all is 
peace. The struggle is over. Jesus is victor. The 
great end is gained. The cup that might not pass is 
accepted. It shall be as God wills. The sharp cry of 
agony is hushed before that prayer of prayers, " Not as 
I will, but as thou wilt." The step of the traitor is 
heard. Calmly, Jesus awaits him and receives the fatal 
kiss, while the astonished guards shrink from their 
duty. He wears no laurel, he is captive, he is led to 
death ; but even they read his victory. Poets and 
painters have tried through their separate arts to give 
us an idea of this struggle and its results, but they fail. 
Faith itself is not sufficient. The garden, so dear to 



122 



SEASONS OF QUIET. 



all because of its pleasant intercourse, so sacred to 
Jesus from its hours of self-communing, so memorable 
because of that great strife, is made by its conquest 
the central point in the reverence. Not the cross itself 
has had more to do with making and intensifying love 
and gratitude to the Saviour than that garden scene, 
into which, when the victory was gained, angels with 
their soothing and strengthening ministries came. 
You who have suffered and have known the struggle of 
Gethsemane have gained little, unless you have known 
also its victory. 

The teaching of Gethsemane is threefold, — quiet, 
struggle, victory. Is not this just the course all human 
souls must run before finding themselves in that per- 
fect peace with God which has but a single utterance, 
" Not as I will, but as thou wilt " ? 

It is a great mistake in these lives of ours that we do 
not have more quiet, — not a mere dull, lethargic rest, 
but a quiet that comes from God, and the soul's rest in 
him. How busy, absorbed, harassed our lives are, as 
if there were never to be a break in this vigorous, act- 
ive existence, as if there were no higher, no superior 
demand made of us. We are educating ourselves with 
zeal and thoroughness for every duty and contingency 
of the market and the exchange. I do not suppose the 
world ever saw men more magnificently equipped for 
every sort of material enterprise. I do not suppose 
the world ever saw powers of mind and body more thor- 
oughly trained for temporal conquest and success than 
shall be found among us to-day. And for these the 
bustle and excitement and association, the interchange 
of thought, the combination of various ability, — the 



SEASONS OF QUIET. 



123 



marked features of our day, — are essential. But there 
is a life which cannot live in this atmosphere, a life not 
to be made of this material. As the other waxes, it 
wanes ; and, in all the press and overplus of activities, 
it fades and dies. Jesus himself could not keep the di- 
vine life in him up to its healthy tone save by getting 
out of the whirl in which daily life held him, and get- 
ting by himself, finding, making quiet, — quiet that had 
not merely rest in it, but God. And, if such as he 
needed such seasons, how much more we ! How much 
we miss, of how much we fail, through want of them ! 

There is for every one of us the Gethsemane of trial, 
of mental struggle, the hour and power of darkness. 
Laugh now and be happy as we will, the time comes to 
all; and there is not a more hopeless, helpless mortal 
than the man who has been both brave and wise in 
every complication of life, when he finds himself intro- 
duced to the society of a new class of experiences, and 
when, instead of compelling men and things to submit 
to his will, he must himself submit to the will to 
which he has been stranger. It is sad to see how 
utterly such a one wilts before the presence of sorrow 
and trouble, how little he knows what they mean or 
how to use them, to whom to go or how to go to Him. 
It is sad to see the giant prostrate and grovelling, or 
fumbling blindly for support. 

What all need is to prepare for trial. There is 
no sure result in life for which a wise man does not 
prepare himself. No man expects to accomplish an 
end for which he is unprepared. That is the decision, 
the wisdom of the market-place. What so grave, so 
heavy, so sure, as trial, sorrow, loss, the grand disci- 



124 



SEASONS OF QUIET. 



plines of God ? And how can they be met, except they 
be prepared for, except by seasons, it may not be long, 
but frequent, in which the soul shall insist upon the 
world's taking its proper subordinate place, while it 
invites the visits of a better spirit, and seeks to sanctify 
itself by self-purging and divine communion, that it 
may know itself and God, — seasons not annual, pro- 
longed, but at every moment of need ? Trials coming 
to us, then, as the dealings of a Being whom we know, 
whose love we cannot doubt, to whose will we bend, 
will work their cleansing and healing. 

We may struggle as Jesus. We may cry to have the 
cup pass. We may say before we can feel the prayer 
of perfect resignation, for Gethsemane is ours. 

Victory must follow, the undisturbed serenity of a 
soul at one with God, by quiet, through trial to peace, 
that peace which Jesus said he gave, but not as the 
world. There is no more enviable condition than that 
of him who has been led by the trials of his condition 
into the great peace, who has made the pressure of 
adverse things the means of a deep faith. Talk of 
worldly successes, if you will ; point to honors and 
dignities and powers, and call them life's great good. 
There is no good so great as that which the soul has 
itself wrought and secured, through its overcoming 
faith. There is no man so great, so honored, so suc- 
cessful, and so happy as he who through much tribu- 
lation has entered into the spirit of acquiescence in a 
divine ordering he cannot understand, who has so con- 
quered his own will that it has become merged in that 
of God. 

Oh, what high things we talk of ! How much above 



SEASONS OF QUIET. 



125 



are they ! We strain and reach up toward that excel- 
lence. We know it is all true, we wish we were push- 
ing toward that victory ; but, alas ! it is not so. When 
shall it be ? When the Master's life has for us more 
charm than the charms of the world, when we can 
spare seasons for withdrawal and refreshing, when we 
shall feel that we cannot afford to slight means of 
which he felt the necessity, when life's grave trials 
find us prepared by a knowledge and service of God to 
accept his discipline, acquiesce in his will ; when, hav- 
ing kept the conditions, we shall achieve the inevitable 
victory. 

Let us not lose, forget, slight the teachings of Geth- 
semane, — the place of quiet, the place of struggle, the 
place of victory. Let its history awaken not merely 
sentiment or gratitude, but desire to possess the like 
spirit ; and, when our days of trial darken about us, may 
we have so trained our souls in quiet that our struggles 
shall have the great and perfect triumph. 

March 1, 1863. 



XI. 

THE FIERY FURNACE. 

"Nor the smell of fire had passed on them."— Daniel iii , 27. 

It is a very wondrous story. No miracle recorded 
in the life of Jesus violates more the laws of nature as 
we understand them. The statement is very explicit. 
These officers of the king who were Jews refused to 
bow before the goJden image which Nebuchadnezzar, 
the king, had set up. They are brought before him, and 
remain obdurate. Their answer is very noble : " We 
are not careful to answer thee in this matter. If it be 
so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from 
the burning, fiery furnace ; and he will deliver us out of 
thy hand, O king. But, if not, be it known unto thee, 
O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship 
the golden image which thou hast set up." There was 
of course but one reply. • As in the later day of Chris- 
tian persecutions, when the recusant was remanded to 
the lions, were these ordered to the fiery furnace, in 
•the king's wrath heated seven times hotter than was 
wont. And the mightiest men of the army, lifted 
them to throw them in, but fell dead before the fearful 
heat ; but the men were not touched, and, lo ! as the 
king looked in, four unburned men. And the king 
called them out, and the three came out. And the 
princes, governors, and captains, and the king's coun- 



THE FIERY FURNACE. 



127 



sellors, being gathered together, saw these men, upon 
whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was a hair of 
their heads singed, neither were their coats changed, 
nor the smell of fire had passed on them. 

Life is to man that fiery furnace, and there are 
two fates for him which there were here. Some fail 
before its heat, fall early, and, blasted, are licked up by 
the flame, as the stubble of the field. They scarcely 
enter life when they fall before the blighting breath. 
The training of home, example, warning, entreaty, 
avails nothing. They have had all that can be given 
them, are as well fortified as others ; and yet pleasures 
and temptations, vanities and self-esteem, leap upon 
them. They have no apparent power of resistance, 
and they wilt at the first hot breath. Again and 
again have we seen it, that life has opened with every 
promise. The young girl, the young man, has stepped 
into it, to waver and fail, — the tempting things too 
strong, the seducing things too fair, the glittering 
things too real. I do not mean to say they have sunk 
into any great and positive sin; but they have turned 
away from the things they have been taught are life's 
foundations and hope, and have given themselves over 
to the spirit of the world, that corroding canker, which 
eats into and eats out the life of so many hearts, and de- 
stroys the better self as nothing else can, which is not 
the fault, mistake, vice of the elder or the wealthy, of 
the hackneyed in the world's way, the veteran devotee 
at the shrine of pleasure, but on young people making 
its first deep furrow very plain and sometimes indelible, 
and across a spirit that had seemed of better metal. I 
think it not to be hardly pressed upon them, when the 



128 



THE FIERY FURNACE. 



young waver as life opens itself to them, when they 
begin to take the handling of themselves and see the 
thing that life seems to be, now that they are their own 
masters. It is not a thing to be wondered at that they 
should bow before the hot simoom which sweeps up its 
unwholesome blast, where they had hoped only for 
gales sweet and gentle as those of Araby the blest. It 
is like the wavering of raw troops under the first fire, — 
not cowardice, but the awe of a new experience. If it 
be not quickly met and mastered, it becomes fear and 
disgrace and rout. So the wavering of the young, if 
it be only wavering. If there be moral power of self- 
recovery, if they turn again to principle, if they put the 
world in its place, assert, and assume mastery, it is 
all well. It must be done at once, however, or the 
fatal habit comes that overmasters the habit that we 
see is settling down upon and overmastering those 
young people, whose one law is the decree of society, 
whose one master is the whim of fashion, and who let 
the fire taint creep over and fasten itself upon them, 
till they bear it as a conscious presence, everywhere 
live and move and have their being in it. I say the 
wavering is not in itself a sin ; but the yielding is, the 
falling before the flame, the moral death that follows. 

The men we read of stood safe within the jaws of 
the fiery furnace. So some men and women iu this 
world furnace. But they did not stand alone. Can 
we ? I do not know what it means that one, as in the 
form of the Son of God, was with them. That is not 
an Old Testament phrase. It occurs nowhere else. 
The miracle would seem to be because of his presence. 
I do not believe any satisfactory solution of the diffi- 



THE FIERY FURNACE. 



129 



culty can be arrived at, unless it be supposed that the 
book was written later than its purport, or that the 
passage has been interpolated. Even then, men will 
differ. 

But there can be no doubt about this : that it is the 
spirit of the Son of God with man that keeps him un- 
scathed amid the heats and flames of the fiery furnace 
his soul finds itself in, — not the person, not the confes- 
sion of a faith in, a definition of him, not the placing 
him in the Trinity, but the spirit. However much we 
may differ, when we come to definitions, ail Christians 
agree in this : that there is something resident, perma- 
nent, in the world, something of influence that Jesus, 
departing, left behind. We can trace other lesser influ- 
ences to other lesser men. No one lives to himself, no 
one dies to himself. The influence we all of us exert is 
not much at the moment, as in what is left behind out- 
living the deed. Whether you regard it as a special 
something unlike as superior to all else, whether it is 
only in degree and quantity that Christ's influence dif- 
fers from others, still this is true : that there radiates 
from that point of the world's history as centre, from 
him as centre of it, power, influence, special and pecul- 
iar, producing results which have changed the whole 
character of man, the individual, made everything anew. 
As the sun, coming up out of the darkness of the night, 
touches, tinges, glorifies nature, draws out all secret 
colors and odors, nothing that it rests upon but feels 
and shows that coming, and is changed into its utmost 
by it, so with Christ's coming. If you undertake to 
change it, you do what you do when you undertake to 
change the aroma of a flower: first, you cannot do it; 



THE FIERY FURNACE. 



and, secondly, you destroy the thing in the process. 
The weary world has been at this analyzing of the spirit 
of Jesus till, in analysis, we are in danger of losing 
the thing itself. 

See how, if I were to take away truth from this 
furnace scene, it would be this, — and I think it would 
make a good point against some current theology, — 
the men are seen with one who is in form like the Son 
of God. He is not burned to save them ; he does not 
take all their peril and suffering upon himself ; they do 
not go free because everything is laid upon him. The 
men are safe because he is with them in their trial, a 
presence soothing and sustaining. And I take that to 
be just the secret mystery of the whole thing. We are 
saved by having the Christ spirit with us, by keeping 
by it, — not made safe by his destruction, not by any- 
thing he does for us, but by the power of resistance 
we have while he is with us, by a something we get 
of him that we could not have alone ; and, were it in 
the New Testament, I should take this scene as an 
allegorical statement, of just what the Son of God is 
to the human soul, — that presence, aid, influence, be- 
cause of which all fiery assault is powerless, because 
of which even the smell of fire will cleanse. How 
have men lost the real point and grandeur and power 
in their faith through that many-sided idea of substi- 
tution, through that latent cowardice which grasps the 
idea of one suffering for them rather than of standing 
with them. 

The thing he left them was not his blood as some 
external cleansing mystery, but his spirit, the influence 
of that which in him had been the triumphing power. 



THE FIERY FURNACE. 



131 



He breathed that upon them, fragrant with the fra- 
grance of two worlds. He left his peace, — the peace 
of his spirit the peace which grows in us through his 
spirit, — not as the world giveth, not as the world 
understandeth, not as the world taketh again, to re- 
main and bless and sanctify. He did not go from, he 
remained with. His body was withdrawn, but that 
which was really his life remained, touched to new 
light and power, transfigured as every life is by his 
going away. I do not see in life what element of 
strength there is for me in this something supposed to 
be done for me by the death of Christ, a manipula- 
tion by some dead and carnal thing of years long gone. 
But when you speak of a spirit, an influence with me, 
if I will, coming out of that life, akin to that I feel 
coming out of other lives, like that which has come 
from my father's life, my mother's life, from good lives 
I have met or read about, differing in quantity rather 
more than quality, the same thing, only multiplied by 
the power of his superior excellence, then I under- 
stand it. It enters into me, becomes a power with my 
powers. It helps me. I can lean upon it, be guided 
by it, be strengthened in it. But I cannot understand 
how a physical thing, like blood, is to have any effect 
upon my moral condition. It subverts old foundation 
law of nature, broad as the universe and with no ex- 
ception, that like produces like. The moral cannot 
invade the physical realm : the physical cannot over- 
ride the moral. 

It is the influence of that spirit which keeps us, not 
from the burning of the furnace only, but from even the 
smell of the fire upon our garments. Jesus prays, not 



132 



THE FIERY FURNACE. 



that his disciples should be taken out of the world, but 
that they be kept from the evil. There is such a thing 
as "being kept from the evil" : there is such a thing 
as going through life without the smell of the smoke 
upon us. In our business, necessity has continual 
means by which our valuables may be securely locked 
against the harm of fire. A safe fire-proof is part of 
every merchant's furnishing. These have been tested 
again and again by the most fiery tests, yet have deliv- 
ered their valuable deposit untouched, not the smell of 
the fire passed upon them. In this world, just that 
our hearts may be safes against which the heats and 
flames of passions and temptations may exhaust them- 
selves in vain, where we may keep uncharred the soul's 
most precious possessions, while, as with a charmed 
life the man or woman pursues his way unspotted from 
the world, not the taint even of its smoke passing on 
them, the spirit of Christ within — our own spirits 
made consonant with his, kept in unison, a spiritual 
asbestos — is the fire-repelling power. 

One of the hottest, most uncomfortable days of the 
summer, we rode wearily and wretchedly in the saloon 
of a New York car. Heat and dust, the stifling air 
and sparks and cinders, combined to make the hours 
one lingering torture. We fanned and washed and 
drank, and tried to sleep, to read to forget, to no avail. 
We were grimed as the smith or the miner, — a spec- 
tacle to men, surely, a misery to ourselves. Yet all 
day long sat quietly in a corner a young girl, alone, her 
eye upon her book, sweet to look at, cool, without fan 
or water. And not a speck of cinder or of dust seemed 
to touch garment or face, not a fly teased, not a flit- 



THE FIERY FURNACE. 



133 



ting of unrest or impatience crossed her face, — she 
blessedly oblivious to all companions' sufferings, and 
coming to her journey's end just as placid and calm as 
she had begun it hours before, hundreds of miles away. 
Her very face showed that she was possessed of a 
meek and quiet spirit ; and the uncertain things, the 
annoying things, would no more come near her than 
the vile things would come near the virgin, who with 
naked feet in the night-time, according to old legend, 
perambulated fields and meadows to keep off mice and 
vermin which endangered the planted seed. I do not 
think I shall ever forget it ; for I felt then, as I feel 
now, that it is just that way we want to carry our souls 
through these trying and polluting things of time, and 
to come in at the end of the travel, through the might 
of a calm and triumphing spirit, out from the midst of 
all worry and temptation, without taint. 

Cannot this be ? Have we got to smell of the cor- 
rupting things ? May not our lives have the rich, pure 
fragrance of pure things ? Every life savors of that it 
consorts with. According to what we are, the inner 
society we have had, what lives we lead, is the fra- 
grance we cast out into the world. That decides 
whether we taint the atmosphere or perfume it. 

The smell of the world's smoke invests many as 
with an atmosphere pungent as that which boys carry 
about them when they have made spring fires of gar- 
den rubbish. Ambitions, conceits, selfishness, love of 
praise, lust, — these exude insensibly to the man as 
odors do. You do not need to know detail. The smell 
of the fire betrays, and that is enough. 

To virtues there is the same subtile power. You 



134 



THE FIERY FURNACE. 



speak of the atmosphere of such a one, of the influ- 
ence of his mere presence, that it tones, represses, 
cheers as the want may be. It is not inevitable, be- 
cause in the world, that we imbibe its grosser flavors. 
We can be as pure in it as the violet, which, if it takes 
up any thing out of the surrounding filth, so makes it 
.over that it breathes from it again only as the gentlest 
and sweetest breath. That is to be our way. Inevi- 
tably, much about our daily lives is impure and degrad- 
ing, low, and tending to lower us. We come in contact 
with and are affected by it. 

But we can so take it, so through the subtle alchemy 
of a filial spirit transmute it,, so shed away impurity 
and dross, so in the soul's alembic refine away all 
grossness, that it shall become a new life, and issue 
again from us, its earthly parts touched to nobler issue, 
its residue acceptable to the kingdom of heaven. 

Men and women say they must have the earth taint. 
That is because they grovel. They say, in the world, 
the smell of its fire must cling to them. That is be- 
cause they are willing to be soaked in it, and will not 
exert the wisdom of the violet or of God's law, and 
make all that touches them sweet by the power of the 
sweet life within. The purest lives I have known have 
not been those carefully screened from the world, but 
which, coming up in it, have kept themselves unspotted. 
The sweetest and truest have grown and ripened under 
conditions you would say most hostile, but which have 
been wrought into the means of a grandly elevated 
faith and life, attesting, against our laziness and cow- 
ardice, the truth of the example as the words of Jesus. 
No man more exposed than he, yet the smell of the 
fire passed not on him. 



THE FIERY FURNACE. 



135 



Out of the hard conditions about him, he wrought 
the excellence we admire and adore ; by fighting and 
repressing them, grew to his matchless stature. The 
crown of his immortality, though twisted of thorns, has 
borne the undying aroma of its fragrance to the ages. 
In the world, because of the world, was it done. The 
same conditions ours : the same fidelity will make of us 
those upon whose garments no smell of the fire will 
pass. Is it not worth prayer, watching, and toil ? 



XII. 



FAINT, YET PURSUING. 

" Faint, yet pursuing." — Judges viii., 4. 

It was a great victory which Gideon's band of three 
hundred had gained over the Midian kings, not by their 
swords so much as by the fright of their midnight 
attack. The kings, however, had escaped; and the 
pursuit had been long and keen. Weary and hungry, 
the brave three hundred paused, faint as they were, 
only long enough to ask bread at Succoth and again 
at Penuel, in both places churlishly refused. Post- 
poning vengeance until their end was accomplished, 
they pushed steadily on over the Jordan, overtook the 
vanquished, the kings, returned by the way of the 
inhospitable cities, terribly punished them, and then 
went rejoicing to their homes to make Gideon judge, 
and to give the land a peace of fifty years. 

No more striking picture of a restless, consecrated 
energy is presented us in the Scripture than this pur- 
suit of the three hundred, who, taking nothing with 
them but their swords, held to their one task until it 
was accomplished. We can follow them in our thought, 
hungry, weary, refused aid of those of whom they had 
a right to demand it, faint, yet pursuing, a great pur- 
pose shielding them against danger and hunger and 
fatigue, holding them up where most would fail, and 



FAINT, YET PURSUING. 



137 



bringing them out conquerors over every disadvantage 
as over every foe. We could hardly take a better 
example for our help at just this point we to-day 
touch. 

For this is the last day of the year; and the last day 
of a year is apt to find us, who have any habit of intro- 
spection at all, like those men at the fords of the 
Jordan, "faint," not so much depressed as faint, — faint 
in heart, faint in faith, faint in hope, in effort, down 
among the despairs, very near the giving-out point, the 
giving-up point. Something in the season seems to 
add to a something in ourselves to take the heart out of 
us. Self-dissatisfaction has become self-discontent ; and 
self-discontent has run well down to that hopeless state, 
which says : " Well, it is no use to try. I do not make 
head. Prayers, efforts, tears, all seem vain. I drift 
toward the bad. I had better give up, and done with 
it." Somehow, when a man is at this point, he coaxes 
himself with the idea that going thoroughly wrong, 
abandoning himself to the seethe of the vortex, will be 
a relief. Those who do not go so far are yet a good 
deal faint before the review of a year. 

It has been a pretty serious struggle with ourselves, 
with circumstances, with men, with Providence. We 
have not had just what we wanted to have, either from 
man or from God ; and we have not been just what we 
wanted to be. It is a varied disappointment, many- 
shaped, many-hued ; and clouds and vapors obscure our 
sun, and settle close about us, chill, damp, all tone gone. 
Not our own shortcomings merely, but all manner of 
thwarting has stepped in to interfere with the better 
man we hoped to be ; while, added to the depression of 



138 



FAINT, YET PURSUING. 



a very generous amount of self-blame, is the opposition 
from a certain set in things for which we are in no way 
to blame. And it all combines to set us in the same 
tone of spirit that one is in who in his business affairs 
is faced by a year of mishap and disaster, partly his 
own mistake, largely the general attitude of things. It 
is not a very satisfactory back look when one comes 
to measure himself at any stage of life with his ideal, 
with the thing he promised himself he was going to 
be. It is a very poorly realized actual that stands by 
the side of the promised ideal ; and, when one sets his 
accumulating difficulties side by side with his waning 
years, it is apt to bring an almost unconquerable weari- 
ness and deadly faintness, an unwillingness to work 
more, a hopelessness of effort, apt to make him the 
victim of depression, rather than the creature of new 
energy and resolve. The shortcomings urged upon us 
by a very persistent conscience are perhaps the most 
uncomfortable experiences of the year ; and, as the sun 
sinks, our horizon is one of clouds and glooms. 

It is not quite a happy season with us, that which 
first precedes the bright wishes of others for our 
happy New Year. We go down pretty low, reach our 
deepest point of self-dissatisfaction and discouragement. 
It does not do us a bit of harm. It is pretty unpleas- 
ant to have to hide your face before yourself; to stand 
in the presence of conscience, the most unrelenting of 
judges, and feel that you deserve what it is telling you ; 
to know that there is no cunningly hidden corner into 
which it will not follow you ; to feel that the only plea 
or palliation you can make must shape itself into the 
anguish cry, " Miserable man that I am." It is un- 



FAINT, YET PURSUING. 



139 



pleasant, but it is good, it is encouraging. When a 
man gets a contrition, it is pretty evident that he is not 
all wrong : he is just in the condition to begin to be 
right. What he wants is courage and faith, — not to be 
faint and lie down and die, but to start in stern resolve 
again, — to call upon everything within him, and to ask 
for everything God can give to him. 

Annoying as it may be, terribje as it may be, one of 
the most healthy as most hopeful things is a healthy 
self-dissatisfaction, — not the morbid, useless picking to 
pieces of one's self, which results in that worst despair, 
the abandonment of all hope and all control of one's 
self, but that which wakes into the spur and impulse 
of the future any shortcomings of the past. 

First. I conceive this thing to be only true ; and 
though it sound paradoxical to the ear, to experience 
it is a fact, and a valuable one, that, when one is faint, 
that is the time of all others to pursue, not to give 
up, but to keep on. The time to hope most of your 
harassed horse is just at the point of giving out, when, 
if you make the right approach, he will spring freshly 
at his collar, and with a sublime energy, though utterly 
prostrate before, pull through. The time to carry a 
boy through his task is the moment most miss, just 
as he droops to faint, and needs only the right sum- 
mons to make the victory his. 

The real time to work is when indolence most 
tempts, is most fertile and ingenious in expedient 
and argument. You do best work then, if you will. 
On the field of battle, the time to expect men to do, to 
call confidently upon them, is as the faintness comes 
when pallor is on the face, but has not touched the 



FAINT, YET PURSUING. 



heart; before it has* control, tainted that morale which 
is an army's, as a soldier's, safety. The true moment 
at which to call upon one's self to take any new step 
in virtue is at the fainting point, when it would be so 
easy to drop all and give all up : when, if you do not, 
you make of yourself a power, — as one being over- 
come by the deadly torpor of frost rouses himself, 
and in the grapple for life, just at life's lowest ebb, se- 
cures it. 

Hugh Miller, whose chosen companions and friends 
were the classic writers of English literature, tells it of 
himself that, under the influence of discouragement 
and fatigue, he had begun to yield to the temptations 
to drink, so plenty and mighty among the laboring 
classes, when, retiring one night to his hour of read- 
ing, he found the stately sentences of Bacon emptied 
of all their noble meaning. The resolution taken at 
that hour of conscious debasement was ever after kept. 

It is the struggle at the greatest point of depression, 
the determination not to be overcome, the standing 
firm in the conviction that day is not far away at the 
darkest hour of night, which not only shows the qual- 
ity of best courage, but does the best work. There 
may be reasons for giving up, but that one is faint, 
discouraged, disappointed, tried, not among them. 
They are reasons rather for not giving up. 

As he is really the true general, who can take an 
army at the point of defeat and compel a victory, as 
Sheridan at Winchester, so is he the true man who 
shall take himself at the point of fainting, and compel 
himself to keep up the pursuit, not overcome by the 
past, but confident, hopeful for the future, 



FAINT, YET PURSUING. 



I 4 I 



Suppose you have been unwise, weak, sinful ; sup- 
pose you have gone on and on, wildly, recklessly ; 
suppose you have pinched your immortality into the 
corset of self-indulgence, and starved your soul by the 
surfeit of your senses, and in the great moment of re- 
view, of self-reckoning, you have only a wretched past 
facing you, and you stagger and faint with the thought 
of the burden, — the thing you are and the conse- 
quences to come : shall you lose all heart, and utterly, 
deadly faint, become utterly useless and worthless, a 
sort of moral limp, neither form, muscle, nor sinew ? 

The writer of the Book of Proverbs says, " If thou 
faint, thy strength is narrow " ; and narrow strength is 
not what a man wants who has any real living to do. 

One of the wisest, noblest, most wholesome things 
ever said by man was said by Paul, a man of no narrow 
thought, 4< Forgetting the things behind, I press on," 
— not ignoring them, not fainting under them, but 
setting them aside, getting them out of the way of 
hindrance, I press on. If any man had a right to 
faint, he had. Though he said he forgot the things 
behind, it is evident they ever teased his memory ; 
but, when they would possess him, then only the more 
he possessed himself, and pursued, reached forward. 
It showed that he was, in the best sense, alive ; it 
showed that he was not satisfied, — healthily not sat- 
isfied ; it proved that he did not think there was noth- 
ing for him to do but mourn or mope, that he had not 
reached the region of despair, that he could not, must 
not faint, so much was to be done. Once there might 
have come to him, as to many a man, when he has 
first seen the demand laid upon him, the pallor of the 



142 



FAINT, YET PURSUING. 



cheek, the faintness at heart, as he faced, in all its 
new revealed enormity, his mistake, and saw what it 
must cost to retrieve his error ; but that was only 
for the moment, long enough to rally and gird on 
his resolve and take the first step toward the great 
manhood of his after-life. Dark as the behind, there 
soon glowed upon his courage and faith the brighter 
beyond, a painful but not a benumbing contrast with 
the by-gone. He saw the grand, colossal ideal tower- 
ing above his actual pygmy self, saw the great thing he 
might grow into, and without a pause, faint now and 
again it may well be with the many buffets and weary 
contests, yet without pause, without rest, fearlessly and 
always pursuing what he saw to be the one great duty 
from the moment he fell in Damascus road till his life 
of zeal and sorrow found its triumphant close. To be 
thus restless, thus dissatisfied, is only a sign of health. 
We may not fancy it ; we may try to get away from 
it ; we may run it into a sickly, depressing sentiment, 
but, properly managed, it is an essential to the soul's 
growth. The vain wear and worry of sick fancies 
and impossible desires, with which some men and 
women fret themselves, making the past useless and 
the present hopeless, is one thing and a poor thing. 
But another, a good and brave thing, is that healthy 
state into which any one is thrown, who just quietly 
and simply sits down and has a good, hearty, honest 
talk with himself upon the secret things of his own 
past being, and without bewildering and deluding him- 
self with praise of what he calls his conscience and 
his fidelity, or depressing himself by feeling that he is 
in some hopeless case, contrasts the thing he is with the 
thing he ought to be. He will not faint, but summon 



FAINT, YET PURSUING. 



H3 



every energy and resolve that the future shall retrieve 
the past, that its very shortcomings and failure shall 
lift him into success. 

As the poet says it, in the " Ladder of St. Augus- 
tine,"— 

" Nor deem the irrevocable Past 
As wholly wasted, wholly vain, 
If, rising on its wrecks, at last 
To something nobler we attain." 

Secondly, we are not to faint. Though feeling faint, 
we are still to pursue. We speak of the stand-point of 
the present, but really there is no stand-point. "With- 
out haste, without rest," — Goethe's words may well be 
the Christian's motto and the fact of the Christian's 
life. Time — the great, ceaseless, seething ocean flood 
between two eternities — does not rest; the flow of 
thought or of blood does not rest ; life does not rest ; 
God does not rest. How beautifully has some one said, 
" He gave his love no Sabbath rest " ! Work is the 
divine element, essential to the divine life as to the 
human. The life which man draws from God, the life 
which is after his life, the life which is to bring him at 
one with God, is the life of ceaseless work, — pursuit. 
There is no rest to God, no moment of rest to any 
virtue or self-denial, no time when these can lay them- 
selves down, no time when the man can say to them, 
" Sleep on now, and take your rest." The little dar- 
ling, who all day long, with ceaseless prattle and restless 
feet, has been the thing of joy and beauty about your 
home, lays her dear head upon the pillow, and sweetly 
— is there any child music sweeter? — says, — 

" Now I lay me down to sleep, 
I pray the Lord my soul to keep." 



144 



FAINT, YET PURSUING. 



But never a virtue, however faint, never a self-denial, 
however pure may utter the like ; may rest and ask 
for God's blessing ; for the moment of resting is the 
moment of desertion. Without rest, the life of virtue 
must be, as the life of the One all virtuous was. Faint 
that one was sometimes ; for the multitudes followed 
him and were importunate and trifling, the disciples 
did not get into the kernel of his thought, and the cold 
Pharisee twitted, and the crafty Herodian spread a 
snare, and the hunt was up all through his tortured life 
to catch him in that thing which should bring him to 
the cross, — faint sometimes, for the devil pressed him 
sore in the wilderness, and the agony crushed him in 
the garden, and the pains and jeers bowed him at the 
cross, but no rest, pursuing still the great, fathomless 
mystery of his Father's will, daring to do and daring 
to die. Faint we shall sometimes be. There is the 
pressure of many a cross in this life's career; there is 
heat and burden in many a day ; there are soft places 
of dalliance, tempting our drooping spirits, offering 
them shelter and their soothing, begging us to abide 
with them ; and secret, importunate yearnings within 
joining their appeal, but they must not prevail. With- 
out haste and without rest, faint, yet pursuing, steadily, 
boldly, persistently onward must our march be. The 
poet has rightly expressed it, when he speaks of our 
course as like "the pilgrim's, restless as the sun." In 
the present there is no rest. That is neither the portion 
of, nor potion for, the soul. If there be rest at all, if it 
be not utterly ruled out as incongruous to life, it lies in 
the beyond, is the end for which the present is the end- 
less strusrsrle. 



FAINT, YET PURSUING. 



145 



Thirdly, the one only hope for the soul lies in pur- 
suit, pursuing, though faint. In the past no satisfac- 
tion, in the present no rest, where but in pursuing in 
the future is there any hope of attainment ? It was 
over the Jordan that the prize for the weary and faint- 
ing warriors lay. Not with the bread of the men of 
Succoth and Penuel might they recruit themselves. 
The recruiting came after the victory. Not themselves 
they thought of, but the thing pursued. No ordinary 
men they ; but just so forgetting of ourselves must we 
be, pursuing, whatever the temptation, whatever the 
drawback, whatever the infirmity, — pursuing, crowd- 
ing, reaching, only to pursue and crowd on and on till 
the work is done and the great halt is called. 

To-day, then, let us have no vain, chilling, killing 
regrets for the past, no sickly sighing or fainting in 
the present, but let us make a bold push into the 
future, with a wiser heart, a deeper faith, a dauntless 
courage, a soberer sense of duty, knowing no fatigue, 
no cajoling of circumstance or place, no pause, no rest, 
remembering that, however faint and however much 
things may tempt to rest here, the prize is on the other 
side of Jordan. 

The last day of the year is one of our soul's epochs. 
We lay by one other portion of our being; and we lay 
it by sadly, because of its memories, because of its 
delinquencies. " It is no light thing to fold up and lay 
by forever a portion of one's life, even when it can be 
laid by with honor and in thankfulness." Happy those 
who can lay it by in honor, who feel that, however we 
may have fainted, we have still pursued. Let that 
give the new impulse and spur to the new year. Nor 



146 



FAINT, YET PURSUING. 



let those of us to whom this happiness cannot come — 
alas ! the many — stand dismayed, irresolute, faint, but 
get our spur and impulse out of our infidelities and the 
conviction that, though we may have fainted, there is 
still before us the way and the hope of pursuit. 

Let our work with ourselves be threefold, — retro- 
spection, introspection, circumspection, — the backward 
and inward look, the look around. To-day, a little 
pause for survey: to-morrow, the drum-beat for the 
new march. In that new march, forget not one thing. 
When the toils of his unscrupulous foes were winding 
thick about him, the friends of Lord Bacon warned 
him to look about him. His calm reply was, " I look 
above." Pursuing with the upward look, the way shall 
be, though rough and steep, the way to victory, to life, 
— the life in which all pursuing ends, into which no 
faintness enters. 

Dec. 31, 1876. 



XIII. 



TOGETHER WITH GOD. 

" Laborers together with God." — I. Corinthians iii., 9. 

What Paul said of himself was a general truth. It 
was no exceptional condition of his as an apostle : it 
is every man's condition, it is everything's condition. 
Whatever has gone from God's hand has not only its 
own life, its own function, but this other higher quality 
of working with God. Nothing created but has that 
gift. As no man, so no thing liveth, dieth, to itself. 
God did not create and then separate from himself, 
make all things separate, disjointed, unrelated. He 
bound all things together, and kept all bound to him- 
self. There is no .segregation anywhere : it is all ag- 
gregation, a community of interest, interdependence, 
affinities, sympathies everywhere, nothing isolated, 
alien, outcast, alone, — all things dependent on him, 
he dependent on all things. He might have left stars 
out, man out, flowers out ; but, since they are made, he 
depends on them to discharge the ordained preaching, 
not of life alone, but of aid to him. Science makes 
out a correlation of forces. There is a more secret 
correlation running all through the things of God down 
to the lowest, back to the farthest, out to the minutest, 
and up to the grandest : in each and every is some pulse 
of him, the divine heart ; in the divine heart, some an- 



TOGETHER WITH GOD. 



swering pulse to each. His life fed of man, man's life 
fed of him. He has locked all things together, bound 
them by a chain, and taking the two extremes brought 
them together and linked them as one indissolubly to 
his one central self. From him issues, to him pro- 
ceeds. He keeps his hand grasp upon all. His inspi- 
ration is the life of all. Separate from him nothing is. 
Lay down systems of law, interpose series of causes, 
put God as far down the line as you may, he must ever 
stand at the bottom of it. He must ever be at the top 
of it, the cause and result, outgo and return. In him, 
all things meet. For him, all energies labor, — the ser- 
aph that adores and burns as the viewless and unseeing 
atom that lives only to expire. Not that there may be 
built up a huge divine selfishness, but that there may 
be unity, harmony, result everywhere, the whole devel- 
opment of the divine nature as the perfect culture of 
the human soul be reached. 

No more inspiring, no more vital thought than this, 
one we ought resolutely to lift ourselves up to, one 
we ought not only to be willing, but glad to hold, one 
which we may grandly grow by. God's life does not 
centre and end in itself : no more does our life centre 
and end in ourselves. Nor do we put it to its 
highest use, when we serve our fellow-men or merely 
worship and obey some great spirit. Life is more. 
God aims not merely at establishing his own suprem- 
acy, carrying out his own thought, but, capable of 
high enjoyment, he desires to make others partake it. 
His joy is in work and the return of work. Instead 
of keeping it all to himself, he has given all things be- 
sides, not life merely, nor something to do merely, but 



TOGETHER WITH GOD. 



149 



something to do for him, something to do in his 
work, given it to them to be of some help to him. So 
well as I can phrase it in my imperfect language, I 
think God has so arranged things, has so delegated 
powers, so resigned the power of doing things directly 
and solely himself, that he depends upon, has need of, 
the aid of all things he has created, to whom, at crea- 
tion and so long as he continues their kind in being, 
he delegated certain powers. When there was that 
first grand mustering of created things, and under the 
divine fiat they were commissioned to increase and 
multiply, they were so many agents of his that he dis- 
missed to " co-operative labor " not merely beasts, 
birds, fishes, reptiles, plants, and insects, men, but his 
servants, allies, things henceforth he was not to be 
able to do without, having their place and function in 
his vast economies. We talk of things material and 
animal, and shut them up to that class within which we 
define them ; but the breath of the divine inspiration is 
upon all, — upon the stone that has for ages watched 
over the chance footprint of some antediluvian bird 
as upon man. After its kind, each and every has 
something to say or to do for him ; to hold or transmit 
an assigned part in working out the great problem ; a 
secret to hold mayhap till the time of revealing shall 
come. And as men go down into the deeps or up into 
the spaces, prying into the things hid, taking knowledge 
from the relaxing hand of God, it is not buried things 
that they expose, it is not distant things that they un- 
veil, not unknown things they make known, but God's 
servants that they bring to light ; and it comes to us 
grander than the Psalmist sang it, when he said, The 



TOGETHER WITH GOD. 



wings of the morning, or the uttermost parts of the sea^ 
or the beds of hell, could not take him away from God ; 
for we know they cannot take us out of the society of 
those things, which in their sphere, as we in ours, are 
his associates and co-workers, not only God every- 
where, but everywhere the fellow-working thing, the 
thing helping out his idea, assisting in unfolding his 
plan and establishing his will. 

By interlacing, not all creations only, but all of our 
own lives with his life, it is that we shall get to realize 
that he is not there and we here, with an infinite dis- 
tance between. If, then, we add to that what it seems 
to me we cannot doubt, that we are ourselves essential 
parts of his success, that he has made himself to be 
dependent on our fidelity, we shall have an idea which 
many good men will call blasphemy, but which at 
once draws God up from the deeps and down from the 
spaces, and places him here with us, and places us by 
him, in one spirit, to work one work. Not an idea too 
vast is it, grand, impossible, but one to thrill the whole 
being, and put a new relish to life, as well as give new 
value to one's self. 

Take to yourself the conviction that, over and be- 
yond everything else that life is, it is a co-operative 
agency ; that, put to its noblest use, it is capable of for- 
warding not human interests alone, but divine plans ; 
that it is one link between creation and consummation, 
something God needs to the unfolding and harmony of 
his operations ; that its infidelity, incompleteness, is a 
check, a bar, a hindrance to divine plans, — get such an 
idea firmly grappled in our consciences, a real, live, 
working influence, and what a change it would make 



TOGETHER WITH GOD. 



in life and in us ! It would lift life out of the darkness 
in which human speculation has shaded it : it would 
lift the soul out of the lowness in which human selfish- 
ness has thrust it. We should indeed get what theo- 
logians have been so much afraid we should get, — what 
is an essential impulse toward all true development, — 
an idea of human dignity; and we should grow not so 
much afraid to sin as ashamed to sin, ashamed to be 
wayward and selfish, and indolent, wrapped up in and 
content with our own little to-day and to-morrow hori- 
zon. We should feel the incongruity between our base 
conduct and God's grand design for us. We should 
see the privilege to which he would lift us, as partners 
in his work, — not working out rewards for ourselves, 
but living and doing and suffering, so that the great 
purpose he has may be carried toward fulfilment. It 
would give us the feeling that he is building us, as 
lively stones, into the edifice it is the infinite purpose 
to erect, as the concluding and consummation of his 
great thought. And, more than all, we should realize 
the sublime unselfishness of God, who, rather than keep 
all power in his own hand, scattered it to many ; in- 
stead of absorbing the happiness that comes of doing, 
made the many participants ; took into partnership the 
various things he had created, gave them their several 
spheres and agencies, and crowned the faithful action 
of the thinking and feeling man with exactly the same 
pleasures and joys himself was conscious of. What an 
uplifting for us all, and what demand it makes of us, 
and how unmindful we are, and how unfaithful to the 
demand ! 

But it is our way, when any duty is pressed, to excuse 



152 



TOGETHER WITH GOD. 



ourselves, to acknowledge a truth save as it includes 
ourselves. We are ready to say of those strange beings 
of whom we get rare glimpses in the sacred writings — 
angels — that they were fellow-workers with God. They 
came upon his mission, unfolded his will, they spoke 
his word, they discharged his errand, they instructed 
or they threatened men. And, whatever higher order 
of being in other and higher spheres there may be, 
they may well be laborers together with God, discharg- 
ing somewhere the great obligations laid upon them. 
And so the men and women of great exceptional ability 
may be, whose lives have lent lustre to any age, or who 
have helped man forward, or any branch of useful 
knowledge or attainment. Of David, we say that he 
discerned not only that the heavens glittered with a 
mighty host, but they were working with God, ex- 
pounding to man his glory ; of Jesus, that he noticed 
not only the sparrow, but read the lesson of providence 
that its fall was made to teach. It was not a dead spar- 
row, but the means of a living lesson from the Infinite. 
And so we may make telescope or microscope, not dis- 
coverers so much as revealers, bring to us from faintest 
star-dust, from minutest sea-bottom shell, not the old 
refrain, "The hand that made us is divine," but the 
grander truth, " The hand that made allows us to attest 
him, and in our humbleness bear our part in the great 
developing of his purpose and his love." And this, 
too, we might get to believe : that the small, the mean, 
the trying, the dark in creation, or in affair, not only 
bear the image and superscription of the divine work- 
man, but do something of^ the divine work. And yet 
we should continue to shrink from saying it of indi- 



TOGETHER WITH GOD. 



153 



viduals. We plead insignificance, but insignificance 
is a word that God does not accept. He lets off noth- 
ing so. The God-helpers are not these alone. Many 
an agent we have hastily set down as hostile, rightly 
looked at, is on the side of God, working his work. A 
mistaken Christian zeal leads men to deny to the great 
minds, the great gropers of antiquity, that name. They 
are regarded rather as opponent, as antagonist, the men 
who could not see clearly as with a Christian vision, 
as blind, as derelict, as worthy reprobation, punish- 
ment. And yet few of God's more readily accredited 
agents have done more for him than men like Plato, 
Socrates, Seneca, Epictetus, men whom he could not 
do without. His fellow-laborers, men who got marvel- 
lous glimpses, especially they of the later Stoic school, 
of the best truths, have left wonderful record in word, 
if not so wholly satisfactory in life. 

Xenophon could say of Socrates : " The man whose 
memoirs I have written was so pious that he undertook 
nothing without asking counsel of the gods; so just 
that he never did the smallest injury to any one, but 
rendered essential service to many ; so temperate that 
he never preferred pleasure to virtue ; and so wise that 
he was able, even in the most difficult cases, without 
advice, to judge what was expedient." He was speak- 
ing of one who, in his day, up to his light, was working 
God's work, as conscientiously and as acceptably as 
afterward, under far other illumining, it was worked by 
Christ himself. 

Of death, Socrates said, " I derive confidence from 
the hope that something of man remains after death, 
and that the condition of good men will be much better 



154 



TOGETHER WITH GOD. 



than that of the bad." Is not that as grand as the 
great after-word of Jesus, " Whoso liveth," etc. ? Paul, 
under the same guiding, never said a grander thing at 
Athens than did his illustrious contemporary Seneca, 
under the guidance of that inner light which never 
wholly leaves any man : " God is near you, is with you, 
is within you. God comes to men ; nay, what is nearer 
yet, he comes into men. No good mind is holy with- 
out God." 

And, further back, when Elijah and Elisha were up- 
holding the tottering of the Mosaic religion, blind 
old Homer along the shores of the ^Egean was chant- 
ing from village to village his immortal verse, which 
gave to Greece not a poem only, but largely a religion. 
It was Bible to the Greeks, as the Pentateuch was to 
the Jews. He was as truly helping God as his great 
contemporaries, faithful to his light, leaving word and 
work, his insight and faith, a blessing to his nation and 
to all time. Running your eye down the long line of 
the past, it will not do to scout these early seekers 
after God, these early, half-educated laborers, to deny 
those twilight times, in which the uncertain glimmers 
of truth contended with great darkness, or forget how 
God leads the ages by slow and successive stages, — in 
every crude step, his will ; and in every earnest actor, 
his fellow-workman. Did not Christ say, " Many shall 
come from the east and the west, and from the north 
and from the south, and sit down in the kingdom of 
heaven"? »We may go farther. If it be true, as can- 
not well be denied, that 

" Blindly the wicked work 
The righteous will of God " ; 



TOGETHER WITH GOD. 



155 



if most signal blessings to the race have been born out 
of the dark womb of the most dire adversity; if deep- 
est laid plans of malice and hate .and ill have only- 
resulted in best things; if Alexander's sword only 
hewed a way for the coming gospel, its own empire 
perishing while the other struck its deep roots down 
into the heart of the ages ; if American slavery estab- 
lished the gospel of liberty, — then must we say that the 
bad man or thing, in so far as its work results in good, 
the bad with no credit to itself is co-worker, — one in 
the great work, though not one in the initial purpose. 

The reign of bloody Mary, the persecution of Torque- 
mada and the butcheries of the Roman amphitheatre, 
siege of Londonderry and St. Bartholomew massacre, 
the resolved purpose of men who hated his good, have 
done for God's cause what no other agencies could 
have. The blood of the martyrs has long been believed 
to be the seed of the Church; and many a malign-vis- 
aged evil has been the disguised angel, working out 
good for him. The wrath of man not only praises, not 
only serves, but co-works with him. 

We come back to ourselves. Who and what are we 
that we shall not do the same ? Men and women to 
live through our more or less of the threescore years 
and ten as best we may, getting most out of them to 
ourselves, — merchants, artificers, soldiers, clergymen, 
wives, teachers, servants, — taken up with pursuits, 
with pleasures, with ambitions, exempt, insignificant, 
no part in this great work, not God helping? That 
does not describe us, express us, limit us : we are more 
and other. A something nobler are we. Let me be 
grandest monarch, greatest genius, achieve fullest sue- 



TOGETHER WITH GOD. 



cess, have any career: that does not define, express, 
exhaust me. I am, I have capacity for, I do something 
more. My chief work is beyond all these. I am what 
Paul said he was, what all these other things of God 
are. Nor star, nor under-world, nor thing that excites 
most curiosity, that rouses most awe, is what I am in 
this lower universe of God ; the only created thing, 
capable, intelligently to itself, of spreading the divine 
name and glory ; capable in other than a machine way 
of helping out the divine process, adding to the divine 
pleasure, returning somewhat of the Giver's gifts. 
Something has come to me that men call revelation, 
something that draws God out of the glorious, that 
draws me toward the glories, that shows me to myself, 
that enables me to understand another will and work 
in unison with another thought ; that makes me under- 
stand the divine purpose, not only in creating things, 
but in creating me ; that sets me apart and above as an 
interpreting, co-operating agency. I have something 
to do for the Power that makes for righteousness that 
is not myself. 

By my pureness, I commend purity, and advance its 
rule ; by my truthfulness, I proclaim the wealth and 
power of truth ; by my fidelity, a great lesson in fidel- 
ity is taught. I work for God toward these issues. I 
bring my gift back. I am his helper in establishing 
them. Together with him, I build at the great fab- 
ric, indestructible as himself. 

If we found a man untrue to a human trust, where 
would be the limit to our reprobation and scorn ? To 
desert a trust, to leave a post, to betray a friend, noth- 
ing lower in our human catalogue. It marks the man 



TOGETHER WITH GOD. 



157 



as with a scarlet letter. But here are we betraying a 
divine trust, — not earnestly, actively, with the best in 
us, forwarding the end for which we came into this 
scene ; not helpers of God by the uttermost of our 
ability and our integrity. It is a very solemn thing to 
have that to do, but it is a far more solemn thing not 
to do it. Think of coming into the world, going 
through it and out of it, leaving undone, untouched, 
the most important thing of all, — the thing you, alone, 
of all created things, have the power to do ! That is 
how it is. You do not hesitate to say that life is not 
for selfish uses : you really know that God expects you 
to help him, to make return, and that his things must 
be left undone or wait unless you do. 

There are great and little things in charity, in influ- 
ence, there are great and little services among friends 
and in daily intercourse, toward high and low and 
equal, and all the culture of your own spirit, that it 
may take on the qualities of Jesus. These ought not 
to be neglected, ought not to be postponed. Every- 
where are men and things, institutions and pursuits, 
awaiting you, — your voice, your arm, your influence. 
Not the truth, not the church, not great outside things 
alone, look for you, cry out for you. Life, daily life, 
the life you lead, life just around you, is the sphere in 
which you are wanted, and wanted not to do the things 
of daily life alone, to carry into them a God spirit, and 
spread through them God's influence. 

I do not think it will hurt us to come to understand 
what we actually are and what we are actually set to 
do. What we do greatly want is to hallow life, to get 
into it all facts and belongings that can tie us back to 



•58 



TOGETHER WITH GOD. 



an Infinite Being, so that our whole being shall be in- 
fluenced by and in the service of Him from whom we 
spring, to whom we tend. And hallowing life does not 
take it among unjoyous things, does not strow it thick 
with penance and with gloom, does not sour and sad- 
den. It may sober ; and does not life need sobering ? 
But you can see that to none has life so quick, so keen, 
so lasting relish as to those who are God's sons and 
daughters, who take into daily duty and make part of 
daily intercourse the thought of him. I have heard 
it from many lips, — not as a boast, but slipping out 
unconsciously, — such words as show me how many 
lives are glad and beautiful, — are glad and beautiful, not 
because of the outer circumstance, but because of 
the inner devotedness, without pomp, without profes- 
sion, silently, always doing what it seemed that God 
asked, learning of him, teaching for him. It were 
a wholesome thing would we all hallow life that way, 
feel that no humble thing of ours is lost to him, 
that we are workers in his work, though we being only 
doers, forget something of our own enjoyment and 
realize something of the real end and aim of being. 

Were each of us to begin the day, remembering that 
God looked to us to help him by word and duty in it, 
did we keep the thought near us of our high calling, I 
do not believe it would dash the zest of life's true 
flavor at all. It would only give higher relish, not the 
relish that the sense finds, too evanescent to be de- 
scribed when it drains its cup, but the high flavor 
that stands by the spirit when it has done its work well. 



Jan. ii, 1874. 



XIV. 



OIL AND WINE. 

"Oil and wine." — Luke x., 34. 

These were the simple medicaments of a rude age 
and an uncultivated people. Medicine was not a sci- 
ence, but rather a tradition, as in many of our country 
families yet. A few simples, suggestions of nature or 
experience, kept near by everybody ; matters of every 
day, that was all. No apothecaries, labels, and recipes ; 
no blunders of clerks or experiments of half-knowing 
men, no rivalries of schools, no quacks. 

Oil and wine ! Everybody had them ; everybody 
knew all about them ; every one could handle them. 
It was just as if we were to have roots and leaves and 
shrubs from the wayside. The vine and the olive were 
the commonest things ; and God stores not great se- 
crets only, but great blessings, within the simplest, 
nearest, and most common things, just as he does great 
duties. The hillside in the time of the vintage stood 
garnished in purple, more regal than Solomon's, and all 
along the ways the olive shed her fruit. 

The Samaritan of the parable was not a physician, 
only a traveller. Oil and wine were part of his neces- 
sary equipment. The priest and Levite, no doubt, had 
the like, though the trip from Jerusalem to Jericho was 
a short one. Oil and wine entered so much into daily 



i6o 



OIL AND WINE. 



necessity that they would not be likely to be without 
them ; indeed, as public servants, ought to have had 
them. But, then, priests and Levites were badly de- 
moralized in those days. They were the counterfeits of 
the original, men who went on the other side of moral- 
ity and religion as of humanity, — not men to come up 
to the square of duty and ease other men's burdens, 
but men to bind on more, and bind them so that the 
knot should not slip nor the burden drop. Terrible 
fellows they were, when you consider their profession 
and their opportunity. 

The Samaritan was a different kind of man. The 
priest and Levite put him into a very bad place in this 
world and the next. They would not deal with him, 
and salvation was only for the Jews. For all that, a 
very good sort of man ; and he had what the priest and 
Levite had not, — a heart, and that in the right place. 
He found a man lying beaten and bleeding in the road. 
It did not matter that he was a Jew, who would not 
have given him a glass of water for his thirst. He did 
not see the Jew, but the sufferer, not the enemy, but 
the man, nor the man so much as his need. He did not 
stoop over him and feel a little pity, and then resume 
his journey: he did not leave him and go for a physi- 
cian, or report his case to some charitable society when 
he got to Jericho ; but he stopped, got off his beast, 
took the case in hand, bound up the wound, pouring in 
oil and wine, and did all the rest which you so well 
know in the simple narrative, that has handed an 
accursed Samaritan to an immortality of honor, to 
grow more honored as the ages come to get at the pith 
of a lesson they have as yet only distantly admired, 



OIL AND WINE. 



161 



and has made the name of priest and Levite a synonyme 
forever of all that is selfish and narrow, mean and un- 
sympathizing. 

Oil and wine, — comfort and strength. Are not 
these the two common, cheap things we may all have 
and all may carry and all may give ? Are they not 
the two ministrants all suffering, misfortune, weakness 
need, — in them all that man can do for man, — and is 
not he who neglects them, refuses them, passes by 
on the other side, a priest and a Levite ? And to be 
priest and Levite after the parable's showing, — what 
is it but to have as low a place as any Christ has put 
any man in ? 

The make of our souls is very analogous to that of 
our bodies, at least our thought and language so have 
it ; and much the same process must be gone through 
with in our moral ails, as in our physical. The 
wounded body lying there in the road needed just this 
exact treatment and this exact sequence of treatment, 
oil to soothe, wine to strengthen, soothing first, 
strengthening after. Just this, the need to our human 
suffering and our inward ails, weaknesses, bruises, 
wounds, not merely oil, comfort, not merely wine, 
strength, but comfort before the strength, so that the 
strengthening may really strengthen after. He mis- 
takes who reverses the order or omits either. There 
is a curious inversion of natural laws sometimes, a 
process of which God is never guilty, and yet which 
man thinks to do with impunity. There is an almost 
brutality in the way in which some men approach, the 
manner in which they deal with, the sufferings, wants, 
„ necessities, mistakes of others. The comfort is 



l62 



OIL AND WINE. 



omitted, not in unkindness always, but through igno- 
rance, want of thought, or appreciation. Here is a 
man in misfortune, no matter how, by whose fault, 
or because of what circumstance, in a condition that 
compels the seeking for aid. What he needs first 
is the oil, comfort ; what you would need in his place, 
what you would always give, did you remember that 
so much neglected duty, the Golden Rule. He does 
not find it. The human heart to which he appeals 
does not turn back to study and understand his posi- 
tion, and give the cheer of an honest sympathy, always 
so far beyond the dole of charity. Sharp scrutiny, 
a something almost querulous in tone, not a wholly 
covered-up suspicion, a thinly disguised blame, advice 
not over-well considered, at best the bracing of a tonic 
at exactly the time when the innermost craving is for 
that one comforting drop of which so large a portion 
of the human family seems to run dry. Tonics are 
well ; but the system must be prepared for them, not 
shocked by them. 

In cases of affliction among friends and equals, even 
in the professional treatment of clergy, you find the 
same thing, the poor, wounded, bleeding spirit not 
gathered close, held and soothed, shielded and com- 
forted, not the oil of considerate sympathy poured 
upon its writhing, that kind of " Peace, be still," that 
Jesus used, not only to billows, but to souls. Instead, 
men are exhorted to patience, to faith, to duties, — 
"You must not give up," "You must be brave," "You 
must look to Christ," "You must trust God." Your 
tears and your doubts and your temptings to murmur 
are desperately wicked : you must master yourself. AH 



OIL AND WINE. 



163 



these very well, very strengthening, imperative, in right 
time and place, by and by. The soul has got to rally 
itself, accept, bear, do ; but it is first entitled to some- 
thing other. It cannot bear wine, it must have oil. It 
is a fine thing in friendship, says MacDonald, to know 
"when to be silent." So of comfort. It is the cir- 
cling arm of love and help, encouraging, cheering, 
sympathizing, even " bearing with," the support of 
tender consideration that must come first, oil, before 
one can stand alone, or bear the tonic ministrant, the 
wine of mingled faith and duty. I always feel that 
the larger part of what goes by the name of consolation, 
and is the expected formula of occasion, is a cruelty 
and an insult, it so overlooks the comforting. 

Job's friends were wise. They were comforters first. 
They sat by his side in the ashes through the dull days, 
silent, let nature have her way. It is a picture of ex- 
quisite wisdom and pathos that comes to us out of that 
remote and barbaric past, as every soul that has suffered 
recognizes, — that patient group sustaining with the 
mute eloquence of their presence, till the time seemed 
come when they should begin to strengthen, add the 
wine of advice and conviction, even of upbraiding, to 
the oil of compassion. Our sympathy too much omits 
tenderness. It omits waiting. It puts aside nature. 
In our most sympathetic moods, too much of hardness, 
impatience, and abruptness. 

We jump to the end which we feel advisable, inevi- 
table, and ignore intermediate necessity. We would 
strengthen, but forget to comfort. We do not realize 
that in trouble the most manly, self-centred man be- 
comes in his mopd and in his wants essentially femi- 



i6 4 



OIL AND WINE. 



nine, yea, more than that, more womanly than woman ; 
and that the one element he cannot then do without — 
the comforting — none can do without. 

If we are to bear, to have the benefit of the wine, 
we must have had the preparative of oil. In your gar- 
den, the bruised tendril must first be bound, the wast- 
ing sap stayed, the wound cicatrized before you may 
bind it back against its support, and coax and stimu- 
late it to growth, and expect of it fruit ; and with the 
bruised spirit it is not otherwise. 

Equally true is this with children in a task, a duty, 
or in sickness. We are abrupt with them, imperative. 
Homes sin this way; and here is the cruelty of schools, 
which give no sympathy to perplexity, only command, 
which will not kindly, patiently, tide over difficulties, 
but take wilful indifference for granted. So, between 
its two greatest helps, childhood is apt to get no fair 
play, — wine, but not oil. 

Equally true is it again with men and women who 
have a habit to break, a character to reform, an inward 
work to do, a new life they desire to lead. We forget 
the comforting part, the encouraging of hand or look 
and tone ; the atmosphere of sympathy we may man- 
age to carry with us, and, if we carry, others inevitably 
feel. We forget how much a standing-by " one, in his 
new and weak efforts, may do for him: we overlook 
the little tender, delicate thoughtfulnesses, invaluable 
always, inestimable now, — the oil, which shall take him 
over the early weakness and hold him until strong 
enough to be thrown wholly upon himself. We go to 
work with the wine. We advise; we lay down law; 
we use, if not threat, warning ; we call out and apply 



OIL AND WINE. 



165 



the things of the severer aspect. We crowd the new 
purpose-impressed heart. We expect it to stand alone 
and to stand erect. Not the genial aid of sympathy, 
but the outright demand of duty, — just as kind and 
wise as it would be to take the child, toddling along by 
its mother's finger, and demand it to keep its poise 
upon the trapeze. Oil first, by and by wine ; lead- 
ing, and then standing alone ; coaxing, and then de- 
mand ; that which comforts, and afterward that which 
strengthens. Look for growths, healings in others ; in 
yourself, by the one nature law which soothes before it 
asks for strength. In yourself, I say, because just this 
truth needs to be applied to the self. I do not care 
how severely unreasonable others may be with us, a 
man of any moral sensitiveness is more severely unrea- 
sonable with himself. The most unnatural, depressing 
thing in life is the self-judging of which we every day 
do so much. 5^-unreasonableness is worse for us 
than that of others. In the great contritions that come 
to every man, in the moments of self-loathing and de- 
spair, when a man stands culprit before his own soul, it 
is the self treatment which is so much harder than any 
we get, which does so much more harm. 

What indignation, what wrath, what hard names, 
what despair, to send us sullen and hopeless at life's 
tasks again ! It is not this we want, this that is 
healthy, this that will do good, but comfort, soothing, 
rest before upbraiding, some self-tenderness and reason, 
oil and then wine. And so no cursing the day of one's 
birth, as with David and Job, no despair, no morbid 
gloom, no descending depravity, no suicide, but hope 
and courage, fidelity and life 



OIL AND WINE. 



As I look at it, in our treatment of others, we a good 
deal divide ourselves into two separate classes of 
helpers, — the oil-carriers and the wine-carriers. Per- 
haps I should more exactly say that constitution and 
religious faith divide us. 

Especially among women are there two distinct 
classes. I used to see them in the army hospitals, and 
I find them in life. One is the gentle, delicate, cosset- 
ing kind ; eyes, ears, heart all sympathy, cooing and 
wooing, running the whole self out, exhausting it in 
the overflowing intensity of feeling ; a class emotionally 
sensitive and self-forgetful, whose cruse of oil, like the 
widow's, never fails, though it be poured never so un- 
sparingly and to never so many unworthy. These are 
saints and heroines of daily life, working out the great 
law of sacrifice, and filling too many graves with weary 
and worn-out bodies, giving too much and getting too 
little, and apt to leave their patients weakly leaning 
upon them rather than pushing for strength of their 
own, not asking for wine, content with oil. 

The other is the class of strong and self-sustained, 
not encumbered with nerves or burdened by sentiment, 
good-hearted, well-meaning, but rough and blunt, stern 
in faith, fixed in feature, sharp in tone, pronounced in 
manner, angular in ideas of life, forbidding angels, 
like many a nurse in infirmary or hospital ; wine-car- 
riers, who are always expecting men to take up their 
beds and walk ; who have no patience with the pain 
and weakness to which they minister, and will do 
every conceivable thing you can desire, done in the 
uttermost spirit of duty, all the while with a sort of 
ill-disguised feeling of contempt, as if you were a 



OIL AND WINE. 



167 



half kind of impostor or needlessly complaining. A 
sort of cast-iron people themselves, they expect every- 
body else to be that. They would stimulate every 
one up to their own point of bustling activity and 
courage and endurance. Each of these has hold of 
half a truth, the half they get in their constitution or 
from their religion. Each will^ thus do only half the 
good. 

We are always needing, not perhaps to correct nat- 
ure, but to complement her halfness, — add by thought 
and culture the thing she omits. The oil-bearer must 
become wine-bearer also. The wine flagon on the one 
shoulder must be balanced by the oil jar on the other. 
Into the wound you pour the one, you must not fail to 
pour the other. The decision of strong minds must be 
tempered by the gentleness of tender ones. Mary must 
not complain of, but must supplement, Martha. So we 
get the surest tenderness and the safest strength. The 
really nutritious characters of biography, history, and 
our own experience, have this blending. Exquisitely 
did these qualities blend in Jesus. What he portrayed 
of the Samaritan as doing, he himself always did. It 
is that which gave him so much power with the men 
of his own time, which makes him the bright ideal for 
us, that which will keep his hold on the love and rev- 
erence of men. 

Among all the teachers, he alone comes with oil and 
wine. He alone understands and ministers to the two- 
fold need in man ; and when creeds and theologies, cat- 
echisms and prayer-books and forms shall fail, when the 
Christ men have portrayed is found not to be the gospel 
Christ, when all this claim for other teachers equal in 



OIL AND WINE 



authority shall fade away,, and the truths taught in his 
name are owned not to be gospel truths, then, in the 
chaos and confusion, within the vortex of which we are 
already entered, that one whom we can image out 
of those Gospels as the, Chris tus Consolator and the 
Chrisius Imperator — Christ the Comforter, Christ the 
Ruler, strengthener — will be the Christ about whom 
men will rally, on whom they will believe, not the 
Christ of hard and cold defining, but the Christ of 
warm, loving, and encouraging heart. 

As in individuals, so in sects, this halfness of Chris- 
tian action is evident. Some of the sects are comfort- 
ers, seeking the soothing, elevating, spiritual things, 
looking for the smile on the Father's face, believing 
utterly in his love, and perhaps taking something of 
robustness from that love in the intensity of their de- 
sire to shut off the thought of that hard God men have 
so largely made the Divine Being to be. They find 
man bruised, wounded, left half-dead by the wayside, 
sore and helpless ; and they pour in oil. They make 
him feel of sin, shame, and transgression, what the 
prodigal came to feel : that these have established a 
wide distance between him and the deserted home, but 
not an irremediable breach ; that he has a simple work 
to do, earnest, hard, and long, but sure in the reward it 
brings to his fidelity. The Father's face and arms and 
kiss are before him, and comforted he begins and goes 
on his returning way. Other sects forget the oil. Man 
is worthless, a ruined nature, a corrupt worm, incapable 
of good. God is a king, a despot, not a friend and Je- 
hovah. He can only forgive when the innocent Christ 
has taken upon himself the sins of the world and expi- 



OIL AND WINE. 



169 



ated them upon a cross. The sinner, every man, stands 
stark before himself, alone, comfortless. He is ap- 
pealed to without tenderness, he is driven by the hot 
tornado impulse of damnation to accept a dogma of be- 
lief. He clutches at this mill-stone as the buoy of his 
salvation. He is spurred, stimulated, by the dogging 
fears ever behind him like implacable fates. He is 
under the ministry of wine. The genial glow, the gen- 
ial comfort, the genial hopes of the gospel of comfort 
are sins and delusions. In the stern, relentless gospel 
of strength alone is safety. 

The teaching and the belief of the Church has 
always vacillated between the oil and wine : it has not 
been the blended. 

When the two creeds get too tyrannical and the 
faiths too narrow, then there is a rush from the side of 
strength over to that of comfort. The Puritan faith 
had no oil in it. It gave the wounded only wine, and 
the wine was the harsh wine of the earlier fermenta- 
tion. The reactionary time has come. Men are de- 
manding oil. The Fatherhood of God is taking the 
place of the tyranny of God ; the ability of man dis- 
possesses the idea of his inability ; the old, raw, mer- 
cantile idea of atonement, equivalent, expiation, every- 
where has broken down. Men cling to old shadows of 
great names, and claim great power in the things out 
of which they know the vitality has gone. The sects 
stand and seem to grow ; but the old sect spirit is dead, 
and a new life, broader, healthier, is springing within 
the dead bones. In every one, — it is in Judaism and 
Mohammedanism as well, — it is the liberal, " unchris- 
tian," progressive part that only has life. 



i;o 



OIL AND WINE. 



The great popular churches no longer demand sub- 
scription to the long-time and published tenets of their 
creed, but ease the way to converts by letting down 
the barriers. I know whereof I affirm in the Episcopal, 
Presbyterian, Methodist, and even Romish Church. 
The rigid ideas of the past cannot stand against the 
liberal spirit of the present, which has no fear of hier- 
archies, no reverence for mere antiquity, no bended 
knee for old Shibboleth, but dares put its destroying 
hand upon the things of the Church as upon things of 
government and society, destroying that it may build 
broader and better ; getting the Christ of tradition and 
of men's mistake out of the way, that we may have the 
Christ indeed, the pure and loving spirit who came with 
oil and wine to sorrowing and sin-sick, that they might 
have the peace of God, the joy, hope, rest, of living 
through him with God. Men are calling that spirit 
they cannot stem, which ruthlessly treads out false 
things as the ox treads out the kernels of wheat, hard 
names, and saying bitter and untrue things of its ac- 
tion and purpose. That is the kind of opposition every 
advance of thought must consent to meet. That is the 
way men think to rescue a desperate cause. But, just 
as plainly as to Belshazzar's frightened gaze there stood 
out on the walls of his palace the fatal doom, so over and 
above the narrow dogma and creeds of popular sects is 
written, " Weighed in the balance, and found wanting " ; 
while the liberal spirit in church, literature, science, 
pioneers the way to the new time when the gospel, 
neither oil nor wine, but oil and wine, neither comfort 
nor strength, but comfort and strength, shall receive its 
new baptism and start anew on its purifying career. 



OIL AND WINE. 



171 



And is not this what we all want ? Not that our sect 
mistakes and limitations shall prevail, but that the vast 
truth of God shall make its way and be glorified, purg- 
ing, as it goes, all dross, driving all shadow, that we 
may have at last on earth not the church triumphant, 
not my church triumphant, but Christ triumphant ? 

As I would not tell time by the hither or further 
reach of the pendulum, but rather by that record on 
the dial face which results from the combined action of 
the two extremes, so would I not gauge the gospel by 
its either teaching, but by the combining of the two. 
What Robertson used to say, "That truth is not the 
way between opposites, but the combining of opposites, 
not a way which has nothing of either, but a way which 
has something of both," is true here. 

Our gospel is not merely comfort. When it has 
comforted, it adds strength. Christ comforted that he 
might strengthen; said, "Thy sins be forgiven thee," 
then, " Take up thy bed and walk "; paused at the sup- 
per table for comfort, then passed to the garden for 
strength ; comforted his friends by what he said, that 
they might get strength by what he did. 

See how true that is. Listen to those words so 
strangely winning and soothing, yet with which he 
opens his last talk, — " Let not your hearts be trou- 
bled " ; and then, when he has soothed, comforted, pre- 
pared, mark how he gradually assumes the higher tone, 
and feel your own pulse beat the quicker, and realize 
how reassuring the language was, and how the drooping 
heads were lifted and the depressed spirits strength- 
ened, as his voice rises from its low, sweet soothing to 
confidence and triumph. 



IJ2 



OIL AND WINE. 



From his lips and his life, the gospel starts upon its 
great mission, surcharged with his spirit, to bear its oil 
and wine to all waiting and needy hearts. Never are 
they raised and set upon their upward journey until 
they have felt the twofold ministry. To the kingdoms 
of the earth and to the isles of the sea, to the genera- 
tions of man, to the sects of the Church, to the life of 
the soul, it goes, a very Samaritan with its comforting 
and strength men's mistakes and follies have not been 
able wholly to overlay. Wonderfully has that gospel, 
not yet justly apprehended by any sect, — wonderfully, 
when you know its history, — prevailed in the world for 
men's good. It has another and a brighter day before 
it, when its real spirit shall become manifest, when its 
twofold work shall be done everywhere and upon all; 
when the oil and the wine, equally ministering to 
human need, shall raise the spirit to light and life, shall 
be the balm and the healing to all wounds, the strength 
and support to all souls. 



XV. 



LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 

"Jesus Christ who has brought life and immortality to light." — 
II. Timothy i., 10. 

Did it ever occur to you in reading the sacred his- 
tory, a certain deliberateness and uniformity of the 
divine method ? Our familiar household word is that 
" history ever repeats itself." A greater than history 
does that. God repeats himself in the greater as the 
less, in epochs as in days, in operations of nature, in 
event with nation and discipline with individual. We 
who are ashamed to repeat ourselves, lest we should 
not be original, lest we betray limit, might take courage 
and lesson of him, who repeats himself in every day, 
with every night, — repeats himself in seasons, in move- 
ments of systems, in recurrence of event, so that things 
sometimes seem to circle about a centre rather than 
advance from a point. It seems to have been his 
policy to precede every great act by an annunciation 
of it, to have sent nothing without its herald, its fore- 
runner, to have done nothing without preceding proc- 
lamation. 

The Scriptures give us many striking, startling an- 
nunciations, — words from outside our ordinary range 
of utterance, truths above our ordinary level and fore- 
shadowing the divine purpose, and brought to us in 



174 



LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 



an exceptional way. God, who in his silence, is even 
more marvellous and mysterious than his utterances, 
sometimes breaks through that reserve, and helps the 
ages on by some new approach, some fresh appeal ; but, 
before he does it, he announces that which he is about 
to do. To Abraham, it is announced what he and his 
are to be; to Moses, the burning bush makes proclama- 
tion ; the birth of John as of Jesus is announced. An- 
nunciations seem to have accompanied all the great 
events of Scripture. They are among the invisible ties 
which bind the great acts of earth back to the heavens 
whence they came and to which they lead. 

Those which most arrest our attention, the most 
graphic, the most scenic, the most impressive, are the 
annunciation at Bethlehem of the birth of Jesus, and 
the annunciation at the grave of the rising of Jesus, 
the birth into the mortal and the birth into the immor- 
tal life. They are both made by angels, and are both 
incidents which heighten the impressiveness of facts 
over which they, at the same time, throw a deep veil of 
mystery. The two scenes, each after its kind and pur- 
pose, are perfect, and, were they to be rejected as his- 
torically false, must be admitted to be wonderfully imag- 
ined, such as grandly, significantly, meet the demand of 
such occasion. 

In the text there are two things stated to have been 
done by Jesus. As they lie there, side by side, they 
seem to have an equal emphasis, equally would he have 
emphasized them. But the Christian tendency has 
been to put the stress upon the one rather than the 
other ; and we seem better satisfied to consider Jesus 
as the revealer of the mysteries of the life to be than 



LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 



175 



revealer of the mysteries of the life that is, to follow 
him in the belief in that life than the living out of 
this. Something of this natural to those before whom 
ever lies a fascinating, perplexing, awful mystery, and 
something of it inevitable from the prevalent tone of 
the writings and speeches of the immediate followers 
of Jesus, and the exigencies of their position. No 
sooner is he risen from the dead than that fact is seized 
as the new key to the new religion. John had preached 
repentance, Jesus reformation, Paul the resurrection. 
The Christianity which took its symbol of the cross 
from him has caught also the emphasis which he gave 
the future life ; and unconsciously our gospel instruc- 
tion and our gospel hope are based rather upon an im- 
mortality brought to light than a life brought to light. 
Peter began by preaching that. Paul's one text was 
the resurrection. Of that was he the witness, for that 
was he in jeopardy. Whatever he said started from that 
or ended in that. It was the thing never out of his 
thought in all labors, journeys, dangers. He made it 
the corner of his building. It was his one conviction. 
He was a man of the one idea. The fierce impulse of 
his ardent nature passed it to the front, and kept it 
there. Jesus had said really very little about the 
future. The impulse of his nature had been turned to 
another theme. Could he bring life to light, raise men 
from the graves in which they had buried themselves, - 
could he get them to follow him here, they must per- 
force follow him into the hereafter. If they would not 
rise from their self-dug graves now, they must come to 
tribulation and anguish. He states the fact and leaves 
it, and pretty much all he says about the future is in 



176 



LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 



regard to his own personal views. When Paul came 
to be the master spirit, when he moved against the 
stronghold of Gentile and Jewish disbelief, he pressed 
the doctrine of the resurrection. Not life so much as 
immortality; for it was just then the absorbing thing 
with him and his disciples. The intensest of beliefs 
with them was the belief of the immediate coming 
again of Jesus, and except one bears that in mind he 
has no true solution of the apostolic attitude, his 
orations and epistles. Hegesias, a philosopher of 
Alexandria, taught the miseries of life and the blessed- 
ness of death, till suicides became so frequent that 
he was stopped. 

* The expectation and intense waiting and longing 
were of the at once reappearing, second coming of 
Christ, before that generation passed. It might be any- 
day, it might be any hour ; and the sooner, the better. 
Paul believed it with all the intense ardor of his intense 
nature. It was the prompting spirit of all he believed, 
hoped, said, wrote, did. It guided, moulded, colored 
everything. Not so intensely and surely did the Jews 
believe in the coming of the Messiah as did Christ's 
personal friends and closest followers believe in his im- 
mediate coming to carry out, in literal exactness, the 
scenic display of the judgment. Remember this as 
you read Paul, but remember also that he was — as he 
called himself — an earthen vessel, and that earthen 
vessels failed to detain the subtlest aroma of the great- 
est truth he was appointed to teach. 

What we have seen feebly, from time to time, in the 
limited and absurd preparation of Millerites and Second 
Adventists, what was the universal stir and conviction 



LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 



1/7 



as the tenth century closed, was still more intensely 
and unanimously that belief which pressed itself with- 
out shadow of doubt upon the members of the new 
church. The end of the world, the catching up of 
these into the heavens who should not see death, the 
passing of earth, the coming of angels and of the 
end in that generation, the expectancy of immortality, 
crowded back into eclipse the value, the duty, the desir- 
ability of life. The time was so near that there was 
not time for them to get life : they must do what best 
they could, and be ready for the end. 

The coming of Jesus has been the bringing the "life 
to light," the showing, the teaching what life is, the giv- 
ing men something to do. Men did not know how to 
live before, in no high sense did they live. What we get 
as life among all the nations, the Jews as the most fa- 
vored and religious, the Greeks as most cultivated, the 
Romans as holding the loftier and sterner virtues, was 
not life at all in the sense in which Jesus meant it, lived 
it. It was not at all the type of that which he divulged, 
and which man, amid the baffling of ages since, has 
sought to realize and impress as life. 

Jesus saw that, if he was to do anything for man, in 
the order of sequence, he must first show him the value 
and the method of life. He might proclaim, assure, im- 
mortality; but the condition of any worth in it lay in 
the habit and character of the present. He felt that 
not death so much as life lay within the region of 
shadow; that it needed to be taken out of that shadow 
before any immortality could be worth having. That 
gift, assurance, had been nothing without the other, 
the mere perpetuating of the shadow, not removing 



1 7 8 



LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 



it, the prolonging of a low-toned existence, not the 
building it up into a glory. We have a good many 
characters which on the historic page have outlived the 
chance and change of time, but neither in the two mar- 
vellous collections of biography, the Old Testament 
and Plutarch, nor in any section of history of any age 
or people, do we read of such characters as begin to 
grow common and to adorn the common way of com- 
mon lives, the moment Jesus has brought life to light. 

I think it well on Easter morning not to think only 
of the Easter revelation, the resurrection from the 
tomb, but the prior resurrection from the grave of tres- 
passes and sins, without which, the first resurrection by 
and through our own efforts, no rising out of a tomb, 
the effort of God, will do any good. 

Henry Vaughan, a quaint poet of the seventeenth 
century, says : — 

" Awake ! awake ! 
And in his resurrection partake, 
Who on this day, that thou mightest rise as he, 
Rose up, and cancelled two deaths due to thee," 

meaning the death of the body in its tomb and the 
death of the soul in its. The latter only really concerns 
us. What we have to do is to live, to break the bond- 
age and cere-cloth of evil, to come forth from the cor- 
ruptions we seek, love, submit to, and walk in that new- 
ness of life which shall ripen into immortality by its 
own law, as the blossom of the tree ripens into fruit by 
its own law. 

For a long time, we have been taught there was no 
belief in immortality among the heathen peoples, and 
there was none that satisfies our new Christian condi- 



LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 



1/9 



tions. But all people have had a belief in a future of 
some kind, and the revelation that Jesus brought was 
rather a revelation of the kind of future than the fact 
of future. No unimportant part of the mythologies, 
the poems of Greece and Rome, and the thoughts of 
philosophers, was taken up with the future. 

There was belief in it, in some cases belief enough 
to modify the act of the present life, belief enough, in 
the case of the , Egyptians, to make the present little 
and the future much. They had become more anxious 
about their tombs than they were about their dwellings, 
and their interest in the things beyond eclipsed and 
cooled their interest in things this side. 

I really think that men needed to have life brought 
to light rather than immortality: they thought less 
about it, did less for it. For what was life at that 
time, what had life been ? Could anything be more 
low, more hopeless, more degrading, not only among 
its average peoples, but among its better, its repre- 
sentative men ? Do we really get at life in its any 
expression, except in the very rarest instances, that 
any way betrays a knowledge or appreciation of great 
duties and possible growths, or a conception of it as 
an inward being rather than an outward growth ? The 
very idea of life was in the dark. The corruption that 
reeked and festered history everywhere hints at, but 
does not unveil. The world was dead in trespasses and 
sins. It was one drear charnel-house ; and all the nat- 
ural trapping of society, and all the apparent solidity 
of empire, and all the elegance and culture and luxury 
of here and there, this and the other, were but the thin 
veil drawn over the body of a death whose ghastly hor- 



l80 LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 

rors were suggested by the very magnificence of the 
shroud enclosing them. Life was dead. There was 
no moral man, — more than that, there was no spiritual 
man ; no lofty, unselfish devotion, aspiration, no gener- 
ous self-abnegation ; no desire to press beyond the sat- 
isfaction of the day ; nothing of that which to-day 
makes the better life of civilization, the life of our im- 
perfect Christianity. Life needed to be brought to 
light, and a resurrection of man not so much from the 
grave as from the death of sin. Not to show men how 
to die, and take the shadows from death, but to show 
men how to live, and to take the shadows from life, 
Christ's mission. 

The soul was obscured as to itself. Men were not 
conscious of its quality. Sense, taste, power, intellect, 
they were conscious of ; but of a something whose range 
was other than these, something which, interpenetrat- 
ing these, should lift and transfigure these, should take 
the whole being out of their range, and mould it into 
grace and power beyond highest philosophic dreaming, 
making the average of ordinary life high over what the 
highest range of it had, at any time, been among any 
people, — they did not grasp that grandest conception 
of the Infinite, which it was left to Jesus to voice, 
which brought him out of silent and immense dis- 
tances, and made him to be, whatever of power he 
might be in far away spaces ; to be a dweller in human 
hearts, loving them and asking to be loved; One 
whom, in the poverty of our human conception, we 
call our Father, but whose Infinite Self as much 
transcends our highest thought of that relation as his 
Infinitude surpasses the little life of the most ephem- 



LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. l8l 

eral of his creations. They did not grasp those higher 
obligations and duties of man to man, which we group 
under the ruling of the Second Commandment ; all 
those better sympathies and charities which have added 
so much to the value and wealth of life ; which are 
the correctives of selfishness ; which show how we all 
become our brothers' keepers, and force us not merely 
to do the good that offers, but to go out of our way 
to find and do it. I think that we may somewhat 
state it thus : that, before Christ, the human heart 
was prompted to say, "Be ye warmed and filled," 
but since Christ the Christianly heart seeks to warm 
and fill, and the well-wisher is become the well-doer. 
These things are what Jesus specially added to the 
best thought and effort of his time ; bringing life to 
light, revealing what lay behind gross darkness, and 
showing to man the boundlessness of the application 
of his principles, the moment the scales drop from 
the long-sealed eyes, and the heart becomes warm and 
responsive under the vision. 

I think that we must remember that Jesus never 
stopped to prove the existence of God or the fact of 
immortality, that he took these from the first and all 
along as not to be questioned, as living stones to build 
upon, but that he did spend his life proving what was 
to be the excellence of life, what was the sweetness 
and joy of earnest, humble endeavor, and how, though 
thorn crowns rewarded, and crosses pressed, and jeers 
followed, and hates abounded, and every manner of loss 
and tribulation grew, these made a life in the soul; 
made a life out in the every-day world so refined, so 
full of hope, so rich in trust, that the things they 



182 



LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 



added were in superabundant measure, of more excel- 
lent worth than the things they took away. His whole 
life, sermon, parable, precept, act, — the mere miracle 
that healed the body, the more kindly miracle that reas- 
sured the soul, — were the abounding and elaborate 
proofs by which he strove to win men away from the 
low, narrow, degraded thing they esteemed life to be. 
The stress of his effort was to throw light upon life ; 
and what he said of immortality — though we have been 
used to putting it the other way — was auxiliary, I had 
almost said subsidiary, to it. What he said was, Re- 
pent, reform ; make your life right ; love God ; serve 
one another ; watch your hearts and all their outgoes ; 
do as you see I am doing ; make life as you go, day by 
day, and it will grow into, make that eternal life, which 
is clothed upon with immortality here and now. As a 
fact, now and then, to quicken his disciples, he spoke 
of rising from the grave ; but, as a duty, he perpetually 
pressed it upon them to lift themselves out of the grave 
of sin, — not to put stress upon a future rising into some 
other existence, but to put stress upon the present 
abandonment of whatever makes a shame or a regret, 
rising into new life here. To the inherent immortality 
of the soul, from which nothing can separate it, to which 
it is heir by virtue of its parentage and birth from God, 
Jesus added the immortality that can only be shared by 
those who have known his life, by faith and work have 
grown into that abounding life which he came to pro- 
claim ; who have put into their grave the trespasses 
and sins which had deformed them, and have grown 
through the might of the Divine Spirit into the propor- 
tion and hope of the pure and the true. To live and 



LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 



183 



move and have one's being within the sphere in which 
Christ lived, and to be led by the same hand, trained 
by the same discipline, to feel the pulses of the same 
hope, to be encouraged, cheered by the same love, to 
share a life which lifts man out of the downward ten- 
dency in one part of his nature into the divine life for 
which it yearns, is to know and to participate in that 
one thing, life, which made Christ supreme, head 
over all things. 

As I regard it, there is a great deal of unhealthy sen- 
timentality about immortality, a very great deal that is 
purely false and harmful. In itself, it is a solemn and 
sublime reality ; and the veil which has been hung be- 
tween the present and the future never has been rent. 
Where God chose silence and secrecy, man has been 
busy with ingenious curiosity, and has piled about, en- 
cumbered, overlaid the fact by the ten thousand times 
ten thousand incongruities of his hope or his fear. 
The saddest and dreariest of all literature is that in 
which, whether Calvinist, Swedenborgian, Spiritualist, 
Universalist, Romanist, prose or poetry, attempt is 
made to set up some peculiar say-so about the future. 
Resignation, hope, faith, cheer, these are not only 
beautiful, but well ; but whatsoever is more cometh of 
ignorance, and doeth evil. Specially vicious are the 
hymns put into the hands of our children, and offered 
for the use of ourselves, and that rhetoric of what we 
call our more spiritual sermons. They are unhealthy 
and wrong, and do more to excite a morbid, sickly 
sentiment than to quicken the pulses of vigorous life. 
We are prone enough to prefer dwelling in the at- 
mosphere of sentiment rather than under the more 



LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 



bracing influences of duty and principle. Duty and 
principle become so distasteful because we have made 
to ourselves a more congenial thing of the vague and 
misty atmosphere of sentiment. Sentiment is the en- 
ervating air of a sunny South ; principle, the bracing 
tonic of a sturdy North. Our religion is always run- 
ning away from the one, and running into the other, 
when it should be the just and happy mingling of the 
two. Whatever of a sort of ecstacy or emotion may be 
got out of the larger part of the literature of immor- 
tality, a just and real and abiding happiness, a thing to 
stand all tests, cannot be had. Our faith is not content 
to be healthy and manly and real, reticent in its ex- 
pressions ; but it runs to vague rhapsodies, vain and 
fictitious aspirations and longings, diffusing a tone 
whose mischief-making we do not realize, because we 
shrink from the rugged, unexplained fact, and seek 
comfort and soothing from whatever will undertake to 
clothe it for us. We do not mind it that there is an 
uncouth rock, ragged and shabby, in the midst of our 
well-trimmed lawn, if we can manage it that living 
vines shall throw over it the vesture of their freshness, 
and we do not mind it so much that there is this mys- 
tery in life, if so be somebody garnish it with the 
leaves and flowers of his devising. But the rock 
is beneath the vine, just the same, uncouth, ragged, 
shabby; and the mystery is there, just as appalling, 
whatever poetry, rhetoric, imagination, desire, may 
have combined to conceal it beneath their declarations. 
In nothing does our religion more need the strong, un- 
sparing hand, that shall strip it of a deal of present 
and acceptable nothingness, the tinsel so many count 



LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 



as gold, and the substitution of strong principle and 
faith for sounding, unsubstantial words used with- 
out real thought or meaning. I do not believe that 
the large part of preaching or talking upon the fut- 
ure life, the retail and detail which goes as the stere- 
otype of sympathy, and true, spiritual condition, ele- 
vates or comforts or in any way helps the man into 
the great divine and relying faith. The only thing 
that really does that is life, the life Jesus brought to 
light, brought up out of many graves and long deaths. 
Put into life, daily and common life, the exquisite pro- 
portion and graces of the Christian ; fill every day with 
hope and prayer and effort, — Gospel-based ; let the 
thought be not of satisfying self, but of attaining ex- 
cellence ; let life be a real and hearty and honest liv- 
ing, full of warm impulses and actual growths and 
great yearnings, and you will unconsciously be grow- 
ing into the life eternal, which is the hither part of the 
life immortal. Living rightly, you cannot help fitting 
for whatever immortality may be, and you no more 
need the evanescent helps of a literal construction of 
the dramatic words of Jesus, Paul, or the Book of Rev- 
elations, or whatever in any time, in any way, by what- 
ever sanction, has been drawn from them, than the 
forest monarch, rooted by centuries and by storms, 
needs a trellis for its trunk and garlands for its 
branches. 

However grand the truth of the soul's immortality, 
and whatever the value of the gospel on that point, I 
prize beyond all other things the fact that the gospel 
tells me how to live to-day ; that it has brought into 
light this life ; that it lays its stress upon being aliv§ 



LIFE AND IMMORTALITY. 



now ; that it teaches us that we are not to seek first 
and most the resurrection which comes as the eternal 
gift of the Infinite Father, but the resurrection which 
is our own work, which, if we do not first see to, any 
amount of resurrections, at the judgment days, will not 
help us. 

The Easter suns still rise and set, and the earth 
stands and the heavens remain. In the same uniform 
routine, day succeeds day, and the duties of life repeat 
their demands. More and more, men come to see that 
the one over all obligation, the one foundation and as- 
surance, is that we are not to think of any to-morrow, 
however near or far, but only and singly and simply 
refer to to-day, so using it that it shall go into the great 
account, indorsed by the only one hand that carries 
value with it at the last appeal. Well may we sing our 
psalms, and wreathe our wreaths and put out our floral 
tributes this sweet springtime, and well may children's 
carols repeat in our temples the tribute other children 
once, less blest than they, chanted in their temple, — 

" For Jesus has risen, and man shall not die." 

The Easter for us is the Easter in our hearts, — not the 
commemoration of a past fact, but the attaining of a 
present reality, not to hope that we shall rise from a 
place of the body's decay, but to be sure that we shall 
rise above the places of the soul's decay. 



Easter, 1878. 



XVI. 



THE TENTH BEATITUDE. 

"Blessed is he that waiteth." — Daniel xii., 12. 

The beatitudes of the Gospels clo not exhaust the 
beatitudes of God. They introduce us into an un- 
known field, but they do not lay before us all its 
ripened harvest. They give but a specimen of the fruit. 
In the old time, Sinai mutters and thunders, and with 
great mystery the man of God comes out of the cloud 
with two stone tables of very limited moral restriction. 
They read you scarcely more than the alphabet of duty, 
— some pretty stern moral restraints, but hardly the 
shadow even of a moral impulse. In the new time, the 
man of God sits down upon the ground on some un- 
known hill, and opens the treasury of life, scattering 
blessings as lavish and as broadly as the old mythology 
fables curses to have once spread themselves. They 
introduce us into an unknown field, — a field, as I be- 
lieve, undiscovered or at most untilled by any philoso- 
phy or other faith ; but it is only specimens of the fruit 
that they give. They advertise, they entice us toward 
the bowers and gardens of God, in which more such 
fruit ripens. The Apocalypse speaks of a little book 
that the angel swallowed, that was bitter to the taste, 
but afterward became sweet. So shall we find it in this 
field. In it streams bitter as Marah.to the draught, 



THE TENTH BEATITUDE. 



and yet leaving a lingering of sweetness that does not 
address a mortal sense, and in it trees seeming to be 
laden with apples of Sodom, but whose outer and top- 
most branches are heavy with the beatitudes of God ; 
and perhaps you know that by the laws of nature, as 
the laws of the soul, the finest fruit is not borne and 
grown close to the central trunk, and within the 
grouped protection of leaves, but where on the outmost 
twigs the luscious vigor comes of battle and of storm. 
I do not wonder that, when Jesus ceased, and they were 
come down from the mountain, the people were aston- 
ished at his doctrine. People have not got over their 
astonishment yet, not come to believe in, not come to 
search for, not come to know the height and depth and 
breadth and wealth of the beatitudes of God. 

The Commandments limited themselves to ten. 
Men asked themselves not, Is this right or wrong ? 
but, Is it for or against the Commandments, is it men- 
tioned or unmentioned by them ? They have limited 
the beatitudes likewise. But the beatitudes of God are 
limitless. Those which Jesus gave were but specimens, 
hints, as to the direction in which one is to look, to 
search. 

None of those you find in Matthew is any more richly 
true than this one I use as a text, which is a half-verse 
of the later portion of the prophecy of Daniel, and has 
no such meaning in its place as I put on it here. There 
is no one of you, however, but may recognize its truth, 
may see that it is of the same family as those of the 
gospel, has the divine image and superscription, and 
may well be introduced to us as of their lineage and 
spirit. It is not a bit more self-contradictory than any 



the Tenth beatitude. 189 

of the others first seem to us, so slow to perceive the 
great inner reward hidden within the seeming contra- 
diction of words, and in waiting readiness for any who 
will patiently knock, and, as all knockers have to do, 
wait until it is opened. Some one has spoken of the 
eleventh commandment : may we not regard this as 
the tenth beatitude ? 

Perhaps no virtue, no necessity, is so little understood, 
so hard to understand. It is not a virtue with a win- 
ning aspect, with a countenance that commends itself. 
You have to know it well, as you do some men, before 
you can discover what is really in them. The really 
best things, as the really best characters, do not show 
themselves at once. You must wait for their unveil- 
ing, for time and opportunity. And men look on wait- 
ing as barren, waste time, a misfortune, a barrier, a 
defeat. All about us is haste, and waiting is death. 
A petulant impatience stamps and characterizes us all 
the way through. Childhood betrays it, youth fosters 
it, maturity is a prey to it, and most of our troubles, in- 
dividual, social, civil, financial, are because of it. Rest- 
less, exacting activity is our one acknowledged sign of 
life. We cannot endure pauses, rests, between whiles. 
They are stagnation and disaster : they prophesy death. 
You can't get a young man entering life to pause, look 
about, take time, consider himself and things, wait. 
Waiting is disgrace. Or, if he waits, he waits peev- 
ishly, restlessly. He gets no beatitude out of his wait- 
ing. His one purpose is to push on in that direction 
in which he has set up his goal, and every moment in 
which he does not see his actual advance toward it is 
lost time. He does not realize — no one does, save by 



190 



THE TENTH BEATITUDE. 



a good deal of experience — that waiting is oftentimes 
of surest advance. Carlyle says of Sterling " that the 
talent of waiting was the one that of all others he 
wanted most." People are apt to take life as a race, 
and to think they must distance all runners. If you 
are climbing a mountain, it is the people who are sit- 
ting clown and resting every now and then, every now 
and then taking breath, who are serenest and in best 
condition at the top ; those who husband resources ; 
not the loiterers, but those who rest that they may win. 
And, in the climb of life, it is not the restless and fussy, 
the people who think, the kingdom of heaven and every- 
thing else must be taken by violence, who make life 
one unwearying struggle, one protracted warfare, who 
do the best with it, get the most out of it, but those 
who know when and how to wait, who respect the halt 
that God and duty and circumstance call, and know 
how to make waiting turn into advantage, get the 
beatitude out of it. The best soldier is not he who 
marches best or who fights best, but he who waits 
best ; who can keep up a firm and cheerful self-reliance 
under the most depressing delays ; who can stand in 
his rank all day, while the battle delays its call on him ; 
who compels delay to build him into bravery rather 
than allows it to dwindle him into a coward. Only take 
life in its parts and in its whole, and run it over in your 
thought, and it will surprise you, — not the marvellous 
demand for waiting, but the marvellous, the apparent, 
the transparent value, the blessing of it, what it does 
that no activity, the wisest, could do. The boy worried 
and worn over his task shuts book, gives it up, waits. 
You nor I can tell about it ; but we can remember 



THE TENTH BEATITUDE. 



I 9 I 



how many a time, with a jump, we have said to our- 
selves, " I've got it." Whence, how, why, we know 
not; but, as we ceased to work, it came. " While I was 
musing, the fire burned," the Psalmist exclaims. As I 
waited, the truth dawned, not when I labored, struggled, 
fought. You puzzle yourself over the problems of life, 
balance the " would you " and "wouldn't you." Back- 
ward and forward, the shuttlecock flies. You get no 
result. You have to stop, wait, and to the waiting 
comes the solution. How many gravest ills have been 
relieved, as gravest mistakes prevented, by a simple 
waiting ! With our habit of forcing things to issues, 
a habit we do not intermit when the things are God's 
and not our own, we make a Jehu-drive of it. Life is 
worse than a Brighton road or a lightning express. 
They have it now on some of the roads that the loco- 
motive takes in water as it runs. So we run. Steam 
up all the time ! Stopping is death ! But stopping is 
life. Waiting is necessity. Else all manner of wear 
and tear and accumulation of danger. When one gets 
impatient or angry, and has been prevented from foolish 
act or hard word, he may see the blessing of it. How 
many times a man has to congratulate himself, " I am 
so glad I waited," or upbraids himself, " If I had only 
waited " ! In an emergence, a danger, waiting is safer 
than rushing. In rush, confusion, waste effort, strength, 
loss of power, use, as of head. In waiting, the cool 
gathering of wits and will and energy, and the push at 
the proper moment of the proper thing. 

That is prompt action which wisely waits. And so 
in every problem life sets us at, small or large, not 
the reckless dash of impulse, but the wise prudence of 



THE TENTH BEATITUDE. 



delay, the just time for decision and wise action. It is 
not through waiting that one shall see the salvation of 
the Lord, as the Psalmist declares, so much as the 
salvation of himself from very trying mortifications 
and ugly defeats. I grant that many times "the 
waits " between the acts in the life-drama are tedious 
and try one to the uttermost, spirits, courage, faith ; 
and we have no genial orchestra to fill in the interval. 
It is only dead waiting. . We have all of us to meet 
such times (and may turn them into blessing, if we 
will). A little unperturbed waiting is the best service 
you can render yourself just now. And, in rendering 
it to yourself, it prepares you to render something to 
others by and by. It is not only the only thing you 
can do ; but it brings the only solution, it wins the 
blessing. No optimistic philosophy asserts it, but that 
Christian faith, which, if it may not know the law nor 
trace the process by which waiting grows to blessing, 
can attest the fact. Waiting which is the necessity or 
the wisdom of condition or position, which is quiet and 
willing and patient, not an indolent indulgence nor 
peevish weariness, dissatisfaction, or indifference, is not 
waste. It is not to rust, to be of no use. It is part 
of discipline, a part of development, a step in progress, 
the getting ready for the best service. Not only is 
there the gravest truth in the much-quoted and little- 
understood line, 

" They also serve who only stand and wait," 

but the beyond, the more valuable, the deeper truth is 
of waiting, as a vital part of the life process to which 
all life subjects, without which no life can be. 

But I take the beatitude of waiting to be more pal- 



THE TENTH BEATITUDE. 



193 



pable in those affairs which may be said more inti- 
mately to concern the soul and God, to be between 
the two. It is here, as with the general in the field, 
that he proves the mettle of his soldiers. Without at 
all taking the sombre view of life, or feeling that there 
is any cause for that lugubriousness with which men 
speak of it, I recognize the fact, the pressure, the per- 
plexities, and the pains of discipline, the dsoul agonies 
by which our mortal career is met and tried. And 
I know that many, the very best, see in these only 
the agony of discipline, never the beatitude. I find 
that in every trial we not only want to know the why 
and wherefore of it, not only desire to see the end of 
it, but to have the end at once, and the end as we want 
it. So far from its being man's real wish what he says 
in his daily prayer, "Thy will be done," he rather de- 
sires to dictate to the divine will. His real prayer is, 
and it has not just the prayer tone, " My will be done." 
It is not entreaty, but demand. It is our will, our 
time, our result. We pray one way, and we expect 
another. We wait for our issue, not God's. One 
hardly says to another a more unwelcome word than 
"wait," or urges himself to a more disagreeable duty. 
David says he waited patiently, and the Lord heard 
him. We don't believe in this, and get very impatient 
and unreasonable. 

Our belief is that waiting has no fruits, at least not our 
fruits. But, just as everything has its specific return, 
its appointed beatitude, so waiting has. We disappoint 
and confuse ourselves, and get some hard feelings toward 
God, because we do not reflect what manner of fruit it 
is that we are to expect. We make no such mistake in 



194 



THE TENTH BEATITUDE. 



the things of nature : we ought not in things of spirit. 
There is a beatitude that comes of waiting and that 
conies of nothing else, and to take away the waiting were 
to deprive of the beatitude. We wait with the expecta- 
tion, only too successfully disguised from ourselves, that 
waiting will bring some other than its own result, — the 
result we wish, not the result it can produce. It is the 
answer of our own dictation, not the answer possible to 
the thing, — we look for; demand, get dissatisfied, faith- 
less, because we do not have. We do not realize that 
waiting ha% its perfect work in the slow and gradual 
ripening in wisdom and prudence, insight and fore- 
sight, which make life into quiet and self-reliance. The 
stormy men carry things by the hot impatience of as- 
sault, do wondrous things through sheer impulse and 
energy; but the waiting men are the stronger, steady, 
unwearying, holding. They are gainers even in the 
hot arena of life. And so more in the gravest ills of 
all. Waiting will not take away the chronic ail, restore 
nerves and bones and remove pain, nor will it bring to 
the empty arms and the lacerated heart what they are 
always crying for; but waiting brings the beatitude of 
God, quiet, peace, strength, trust, hope, not with the old 
bound and jubilance, but other graces, better, — quiet, 
peace, strength. We call it resignation ; and the soul 
that is resigned, that has resigned itself after long and 
weary struggle, waiting as a little child, knows the be- 
atitude that gives better than we ask. The common 
proverb, "Patient waiters are no losers," is as true of 
the things of God as of the things of man. 

" Wait a little, fret not, and at last 

Beauty will the barren boughs again 



THE TENTH BEATITUDE. 



195 



Tenderly reclothe, when the snows are past, 
And the earth grows glad in sun and rain. 

" Never vex your heart nor tear your hands, 

Searching 'mid the thorns for vanished bliss ; 
For the soul that patience understands 
Needs no wisdom more divine than this." 

It takes a great while, as we count, sometimes to 
reach God's end. The end of our patience comes long 
before the end of his design. We reckon by hours and 
days, while God reckons only by growths. The tree's 
life is recorded by the concentric rings which, under- 
neath the bark, tell the tale of the outward life, and so 
the soul. We hold out pretty bravely our own time, 
the time of our appointment. Job says, "All the days 
of my appointed time will I wait.". The Christian 
does not, will not, says he cannot ; the language of 
his conduct, "Just so long as it seems to me I ought 
will I wait." Even then, he waits with a good deal of 
impatience, asks a good many questions out loud, a 
great many more to himself ; waits to see his own ends, 
not God's ; starts a good many demons ; holds back 
entire confidence; forgets Christ's utterances of sub- 
mission, " Even so, Father," etc. ; is anything but a re- 
signed, a patient, a waiting waiter. We want to set the 
limit, to say how long we shall hold out ; virtually, we 
say, "Now, we have done our part : it is quite time God 
did his." But we can't measure God : we can't hurry 
God, else he were no God. He does not move by our 
idea of time, but brings or drops his beatitude at the 
ripe moment when all things consent. And, then, we 
do not always know a beatitude when it comes. The 
disciples did not know theirs as they went sorrowing 



196 



THE TENTH BEATITUDE. 



to Eramaus. We go sorrowing, hearts preoccupied, 
earth-ways looking, eyes sealed. How shall we know, 
recognize, the beatitude which somehow, persistently, 
we vaguely hope shall come in the old joy-garb of the 
before time ? As the old Jew was looking for quite 
other blessings than those which dropped their unex- 
pected welcome upon him that morning, are we looking 
for what cannot come ; and what can is very far from 
what we want. Even while the angel stands at our 
side, we turn, and murmur and cry out that no prayer is 
heard, and God is recreant, and woe is ours. Isn't it 
all because we will shape the way in which our desires 
shall be answered as well as the time within which they 
shall come? "I waited patiently," the Psalmist says. 
Paul and James lay a great deal of stress upon patient 
waiting. The latter exclaims, " Let patience have her 
perfect work"; but it can't, so long as one will not 
" quietly wait " for God, and heartily take what God 
sends. It is not more than half a faith that will not 
do both of these. One gets a sentiment of love and of 
surrender, of confidence, of conviction that all is right 
and well, down under agony and yearning where lies, 
while yet one is not grown into that uttermost of faith, 
that principle of faith which waits and takes the God- 
send, seeing the God in it where we cannot find our 
own desires. 

Should it not be remembered by us, in all things, 
that the last prayer Jesus uttered, which he only at 
last uttered through the agony of sweat as blood, is 
the prayer that our will shall not be done, not merely 
that God's shall, but that it shall be at cost of ours ? 
" Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt." We 



THE TENTH BEATITUDE. 



197 



write and talk a good deal about faith, and define it 
very carefully, and think we have got it, but there are 
tests to which it is seldom sufficient. And the test of 
waiting is perhaps its hardest, tries it and you as 
nothing else can. If active work, under the compul- 
sions of doing, so long as one is busy, can lift and 
ease the heart-load by other cares, that bring a short 
forgetting, it is weM ; but the waiting time, when one 
cannot work, when one must stand still and think and 
bear, then is the hour and power of trial in the time 
when sorrow has become stale and has no longer 
an emotive intensity that counteracts its pain, in the 
time when day follows day in dull, unexpectant same- 
ness, and trial is a dreary routine. People come to me 
sometimes, and show themselves perplexed, and puzzle 
me by saying they have prayed and prayed, and yet the 
thing is not removed, the difficulty stays, the load is 
just as great, the way as impassable, the prospect as 
gloomy ; and they declare that there is no use in pray- 
ing, that their faith halts, or else, in the agony of desire 
to hold their faith, they turn, and like the dying reptile 
sting themselves ; and it is of very little use for me to 
try to discover for them the beatitude that has really 
come, so long as the hunger of the soul, unappeased, 
peremptorily demands the answer of their prayer. The 
wife tells me, with a sorrow words cannot reveal, that 
she has prayed over her recreant husband with all the 
earnestness of love to him and faith in God, but it 
avails nothing ; and she turns upon herself, and thinks 
that somewhere there is a lack in her. And so there 
is. Not in love or faith, but in waiting, waiting God's 
time and way, which may never meet her expressed 



I98 THE TENTH BEATITUDE. 

desire, but which will give her blessing, if only she can 
hold out till it comes, if only she shall not demand that 
it come as she wills. To the very woman I am think- 
ing of, though she did not recognize it, I saw the bless- 
ing that had come in the sweetness and power into 
which her own character grew. 

In the night struggle ot Jacob, that scene which the- 
ology has distorted and defamed into an actual wrest- 
ling match between the patriarch and Jehovah, the 
young contestant exclaimed, " I will not let thee go ex- 
cept thou bless me." The holding out until the blessing 
come, the pursuing although faint, — that is what we 
need. The suffering spirit tells me of a state of reach- 
ing out and longing for help which no living man or 
woman can give, and which God does not give, of a 
struggle that increases in intensity and in dissatisfac- 
tion at result. What can I say to that ? Only what 
seems unkind, useless words, "Wait," — wait not for 
what you are looking, praying for, craving, but for the 
beatitude. God never said he would answer that way : 
he will give the beatitude because of that, but not an- 
swer as you ask. Paul prayed that the thorn* in his 
flesh should be removed, as he says thrice, — a state- 
ment of intensity rather than of numerical accuracy, as 
Jesus prayed thrice that the cup might pass, and yet 
the Great Will saw it was better that the prayer 
should not be heard, saw that there lay the way of 
strength and growth, did not grant the petition, but 
sent the beatitude. And he confesses to the blessing 
that he found by waiting, not the thorn removed, but 
the thorn improved into such means of grace as lifted 
him above what he could otherwise have been. He 



THE TENTH BEATITUDE. 



would have owned the beatitude, and that to have that 
was infinitely more than only to have had an answered 
prayer. You do not need that I define to you a beati- 
tude of God. Jesus did not do it. He simply said 
such and such things, such and such people are 
blessed. The people were astonished, and went down 
from the mountain amazed. But people have ever 
since been finding out what the beatitudes of God are, 
that they lie just where he said. Experience has been 
defining it to them as no language would undertake. 
Sermons and volumes have been taken up in defining 
this and the other of what we call " the Beatitudes." 
Only life can do it. Only as God leads a soul into the 
experience can he know anything about it, nor can he- 
turn round and describe it all to another. " Only he 
who feels it knows." So with this which men have 
not been used to regarding as a beatitude, only as 
something wrong in themselves, something inexplica- 
ble in God. The blessing of it must be felt : it cannot 
be described. And I think that it brings in its single 
self all that is promised to all the other beatitudes. 
Blessed are they that wait, for they shall be comforted, 
see God, inherit the earth, and theirs is the kingdom 
of heaven. We earn their several blessings all in one 
while we come to say, — 

"Not that my Father gives to me 

More blessings than in days gone by, 
Dropping in my uplifted hands 
All things for which I blindly cry, 



" But that his plans and purposes 

Have grown to me less strange and dim ; 



200 



THE TENTH BEATITUDE. 



And, where I cannot understand, 
I trust the issues unto him. 

" And, spite of many broken dreams, 
This have I truly learned to say, 
Prayers which I thought unanswered once 
Were answered in God's own best way." 

January, 1876. 



XVII. 



HELPS. 

"They used helps." — Acts xxvii., 17. 

The Euroclydon was a north-east wind. Paul and 
bis shipmates were sailing pleasantly along under a 
southerly breeze, when the wind suddenly veered, and 
coming in quick flaws down the sides of Mount Ida set 
the sea into terrible commotion. We do not get the 
force of the description in our English translation. 
The season was late for their voyage, and there had 
been already delay, disappointment, and difficulty. 
Lured by the soft blowing of a south wind, forgetful of 
the past, and oblivious to possible treachery of wind or 
wave, they were sailing as on a summer sea, towing 
their boat astern, when they were struck with this 
Levanter, as it is now called. With the force of a hur- 
ricane, it whirled them round, as the Greek signifies, so 
that the pilot could not hold his vessel to her course, 
but had to let her drive. Running under the lee of 
an island called Clauda, and getting for a little into 
smoother water, they rounded to, and with difficulty 
hoisted aboard their boat ; and, as their great danger 
was from foundering, they undergirt the ship, for which 
emergency the vessels of the time were specially pro- 
vided. The undergirders, "helps," were ropes for pass- 
ing around the hull of the ship, and thus keeping the 



202 



HELPS. 



planks from starting ; and the process, resorted to infre- 
quently, yet taught to all sailors even in our day, is, by 
the seaman of the English navy, called "f rapping." 
To frap a ship is to pass four or five turns of a large 
cable-laid rope round the hull to support her in a storm. 
It is a means of prevention in the extensive use of 
wire in modern ship-building rarely resorted to. It 
would not stop a leak, but would prevent the working 
of the planks and timbers, and so increase the safety 
under the stress and strain of the storm. 

They had gone to sea provided against contingency, 
evidently not fair-weather sailors. There was some 
pretty good seamanship and some very considerate 
forethought. 

I am not going to follow up the figure of a voyage, 
but what I want to say is that we are not put out into 
all the cares and conflicts of life alone and by our- 
selves to contend with the sudden and tempestuous 
things, but are provided by the Infinite Ruler with 
helps with which to undergird our weakness and carry 
ourselves safely through. These helps are all about 
us, ready to our use, helps to childhood and to age, to 
every kind of condition, infirmity, need. Many of them 
are so plain that we accept and go to them without in- 
struction as by a sort of instinct ; while many of them 
are only to be found as the experiences of life develop 
in us needs, or reveal the character of things about us, 
their oftentimes unsuspected helpfulness. 

See how it was that in the very beginning God sur- 
rounded man with helps, evident helps, left not himself 
without witness, in that he provided him with the things 
requisite and necessary to the on-carrying of life, — life 



HELPS. 



203 



not merely on its lower level of animal necessity, but life 
in its better moral and intellectual development. Run 
your thought back to the early movements, to the first 
knowledge and advance of man as the Scriptures de- 
tail it to us. See how, in the beginning, God contrived 
and all the way down has kept in operation an ever- 
ready, varying, and effective system of helps, which 
he has introduced and recommended to man, and by 
which he has shown that he is meant to come up into 
the broad freedom and power of life by which he 
should grow out of any mere condition of birth into 
something broader and better. Always has there been 
some communication of the divine with the human, the 
Infinite with the finite, the parent with the child. 
The heavens have never been silent : God has never 
been dumb. We who boast our Christian privilege are 
not the only to whom God has come. Not the patri- 
archs only they with whom God walked, and whom he 
has honored as his friends. It is quite time we out- 
grew the selfish exclusiveness of our faith, and came to 
comprehend that, whatever the peculiar gift and privi- 
lege to man through Christ may be, God has never 
refused himself to any, forgotten any, left any alien, 
helpless. There is no grosser libel on the divine char- 
acter than that which represents him as confining his 
mercies and his light to the narrow line of patriarchal 
descent and Jewish pedigree, such as have heard of the 
God of Moses and of Christ. He has sent his helps 
down to all men, not through Moses and Isaiah and 
Jesus and Paul alone, — though these stand confessed 
as chiefest among ten thousand, — but through Confu- 
cius and Zoroaster and Sakya-Muni and the hosts of 



204 



HELPS. 



the wise and struggling of every time and name ; nor 
has the Good Spirit forgotten his children of Western 
forest and far-off islands of the sea. I do not know 
the why about it all, why so few have been as yet per- 
mitted to see the light and know the truth, as you and 
I may know and see it; but this I know, — if God be 
God, it is a terrible mistake and injustice that we are 
guilty of when we imagine the man who stoops to say a 
prayer to a block of wood and stone is not a God-child, 
and is not helped by a divine love, not such as may 
satisfy us indeed, but such as shall satisfy his plan 
and wisdom. And who shall say that these are not 
the best helps to the man in that condition, the God- 
intended helps to that level and range of capacity 
and of need, supplying according to ability, and filling 
out the divine intention so various for all his children, 
in all so complete ? 

The universe is a multitude of helps. It is not a 
mere creation, a mystery, a beauty, but a thing made 
for helpful use. You cannot go any whither that it 
does not thrust out its helps toward you. In every 
corner, they hide ; at every wayside, they proclaim them- 
selves ; from everywhere, they start out at you ; by day, 
by night, in solitude, in multitude, in cities, at the 
uttermost parts of the sea, their hands are outstretched. 
They need ■ no trumpeter, they proclaim themselves. 
The writer of the Book of Hebrews speaks of being 
encompassed by a cloud of witnesses. Much more are 
we encompassed by the crowd of helps, things that 
not only witness to a divine glory, proclaim a divine 
power, suggest a divine love, but things that help 
toward the knowing of the divine love and the doing 



HELPS. 



205 



the divine will. And the thing for man is to know 
these helps and use them; to learn to see them not 
with eye and mind only, but with heart. Spring days, 
summer hours, passing showers, autumn fruits, storms 
and winds and stars and sky; the melting, the awe-in- 
spiring ; the familiar, the rare ; the grand, the minute, — 
we must take them out of the region of sentiment or of 
indifference, make them other than mere belongings to 
the outside of life, recognize in them helps to lift us 
into better things, and use them as such, not overlook- 
ing or despising, not blind nor deaf nor dumb, but 
awake, prizing, and so growing. So it was that Jesus 
grew. The universe was full of helps to him : he 
recognized and used them. Not the least escaped him. 
Nay, the way he used the least, the great things he 
drew from them, left the impressive truth for man that 
there are no little things. The lily of the summer, the 
flight of the bird, the color of the evening cloud, the 
seed of mustard, the leaven of the household, the fish 
of the sea, the scorpion of the shore, the mote in the 
eye, overlooked, insignificant, become mighty minis- 
trants to mighty truths and mighty issues. We, too, 
must learn to search for the helping hands that stretch 
themselves out from every portion of God's universe 
toward these human souls of ours, lifting and holding, 
guiding, girding, guarding, bolstering and keeping aloft, 
so that we can put out our hand of need no whither but 
a responsive clasp awaits it, a firm and cheering grasp. 
The poet tells us of the footprints on the shore that 
the forlorn and shipwrecked sees and takes heart again. 
He uses the footprint as his help. The little weed on 
the tossed Atlantic came to the distressed Columbus, 



206 



HELPS. 



and he used its help and found America; and the 
astronomer used the aberration of the heavenly body, 
and it put him on the track of wonderful prophecy and 
quick discovery. There is no want, no distress, no 
strait of man but the myriad-handed universe stretches 
itself to his relief. He has only to accept and fo use. 
These helps are ready for us in the grave detail of our 
daily lives, where we are so constantly needing help ; 
and they come to us in many ways to our many needs, 
and by them we grow into all life and progress and suc- 
cess, and make fruitful and beautiful the most barren 
way and the most trying tasks. It is a brave thing 
surely to take one's stand, to try to be strong, to be 
resolved to do, to be, to bear; but it is only a refined 
madness when any one takes the stand disdaining helps, 
as too many do, — the young man amid his perils, the 
young girl in her inexperience, the maturer man or 
woman amid the complications of circumstance or the 
pressure of trial. We can never go alone, forego 
helps, are never strong enough or wise enough. We 
may never venture on life's sea without them. We 
may reject what men propose, what they elect, would 
force upon us; but we must elect for ourselves, and 
hold to and believe in others what our growing wisdom 
and needs discover to be useful. To know what is good 
for help as the bird knows what is good for food, to 
make help often out of things antagonistic and adverse, 
never to turn the helps into hindrances, always to dis- 
cover and use the hidden and disguised blessing, — in 
this lies some of our best wisdom ; and they who so use 
life walk in the broadest liberty, and find that a garden 
of all fruit which to others seems but a dry and parched 
and barren wild. 



HELPS. 



207 



When people talk about the helps to be used toward 
a religious life, they a good deal run to a few stereotype 
things, and there leave it, as if it exhausted the demand. 
Our religion suffers greatly that way. We are taken 
to a few things ; we are told these are the only helps, 
and are urged to use them ; if we are to get into the 
coveted kingdom, it is by these means alone. But I 
come more and more to believe that the Church over- 
looks and mistrusts many good things, and so leaves 
the man without help of much that is of the highest 
use, much he would gladly and profitably use, only it 
were not forbidden. I find that Jesus had little respect 
for the things in which the Jewish leaders had com- 
pressed the only helps for the people of his day; and 
that outside them wholly he found the things helpful 
to him, which were to help people into his kingdom. 
To-day, our church allowings are most arbitrarily re- 
stricted — in something of Old Testament narrowness 
— to a special round of things which have got a church 
impress and the indorsement of custom and time. 
But these do not exhaust the list, nor do they include 
many of the best helping things. When men say, " Go 
to Jesus, go to church, read your Bible, have your times 
of communion and prayer, these are the appointed 
means of grace, which, after all, though in somewhat 
modified phrase, is the allowance, the prescription, the 
limitation of our own sect. I say, Very well ; but do 
not stop here. These are not all. There is a wide 
range of help outside, which a man may find adapted to 
his own private, peculiar want, opportunity, tempera- 
ment, which no man may catalogue for another, which 
accepted by another none may gainsay, — these are often 



208 



HELPS. 



the richest to him, the really invaluable. And I hold 
that every really growing, honest man must have his 
own special ways of climbing along the heavenly 
heights, of getting access to their immeasurable 
height and worth, use his own helps, — things which 
are not the prescribing of any authority, but the dis- 
covery, the necessity, of his own experience. His rich- 
est life, that which is really, immediately, and individ- 
ually his, will come that way. We may totter in the 
infancy of all effort, more securely in leading-strings ; 
but, so soon as we get to firm step and just poise, 
to be able to really go alone, we only come to our true 
gait by taking the pace, the stride, the paths we find 
best adapted to ourselves. We must assert selfhood 
in everything, if we are to be anything. Biographies 
amply attest to us how souls that have lagged wearily 
under the old reiteration and routine ripen into mar- 
vellous richness the moment they leave off servile 
copying of others and take matters into their own 
hands, and seek and find food that is convenient for 
them. Very much of what we find sanctioned, de- 
manded, has no real regard to or adaptation for the 
actual want of the soul. It is the mistaken limiting of 
a far-back, ignorant, bigoted past, that never glimpsed 
the depth of human nature or the breadth of divine 
requirement. However it may have sufficed for gener- 
ations past, it cannot answer for to-day, is not nourish- 
ing the souls to-day as they require to be nourished, is 
not building souls as the kingdom of God. 

The religious life, the thing we really want to 
have, a thing of root and vigor, is never fairly got 
where so much of God's making, both in man and 



HELPS. 



209 



nature, is neglected. Our religion fails to make whole 
men and women. Parts of us never grow, are not en- 
couraged to grow, which are as much needed to a just 
development of character as any. How many real 
graces what are called the world's people have, which* 
what are called the church's people rarely show! How 
much richer their lives, though the technicalities of 
their faith and their anise and cumin may not be so 
exact ! The Puritan and the Quaker and the strict 
church member, ignoring some of the best helps to a 
broad and lovely Christian life, have failed in some of 
the essential qualities, and have brought a grave dis- 
trust of and a deep dislike to that thing they are un- 
dertaking to commend. I do not believe good books, 
singing psalms, dry talk, dreary discussions, much 
Bible language, strictly kept Sundays, painful precision 
of demeanor, frowning upon innocent enjoyment, or 
the accepted paraphernalia and machinery of our re- 
ligious institutions, are the only helps to be used in 
growing toward Jesus, were the only helps he used in 
growing toward God. He believed in the other part 
of his own nature as he did in the other side of God's, 
and set himself to find and to use the neglected helps 
with which life was full ; and he would set us at the 
same thing. I believe God's glory in the world, God's 
providence in history, God's truth in science, God's glad- 
ness in nature, all that is good and brave and bright in 
life, modest traits that we neglect, powers of mind and 
act pious people shake their heads at, things men have 
stamped as devices of the devil, purely innocent and 
joyous as in themselves they are, — : these, a host, and 
others one cannot even at the moment hint at, may 



2IO 



HELPS. 



be made to be useful helps in the best outgrowth 
whose best fruit is never reached through mere church- 
going and creed and ceremony. The open eye, the 
seeing heart, may find ready, waiting everywhere, helps 
to lead into the great stores of a divine wisdom and 
love, the broad reaches of a noble human life. We 
must not refuse them, but accept and use them, and 
feel that in this universe of God nothing that is in it- 
self innocent and lovely but may be, must be, was in- 
tended to be of useful help to the immortal man ; feel 
deeper than that that nothing is so low and vile, so hard 
and hopeless, but, rightly met and used, it may be turned 
into the best strength of life. The best helps to man 
are oftentimes the bad things in him and about him, 
which he learns rightly to use. But the greatest help 
after all — one many learn to overlook, to do without 
and so make no real, great life — is the help we may be 
to ourselves, the help we may get from the better part 
of our own natures. We are not left impotent, com- 
pelled to wait for angels or for man : we can be in no 
condition, no strait, where we may not help ourselves, 
and as no other helps may. One would not put other 
things, other necessities, other relations and circum- 
stances out of sight, deny their weight, their help. Only 
should we always remember that the way into the 
highest and broadest excellence comes of the use of 
the self, the help that our own individuality adds to 
whatever is without us or above us. 

The maxim of daily prudence is, " Put as much into 
the world as you take out of it/' and the maxim of 
a right life should be, "As much as other things help 
you, so much, at least, be sure you help yourself/' 



HELPS. 



211 



The strength of men, their efficiency, the great and 
valuable things they do, the grand characters they 
grow to, the lives they lead, are because they use this 
self-help. They do not stand by and let other things 
help them, or use the things about them merely ; but 
they use the helps that are in themselves, — things of 
which every man has more store than he is apt to be 
conscious or to put in motion. In the war years, we 
saw men, under emergence, grow to sudden and great 
life, become equal to new and immense responsibility, 
found them capable of great duty and sacrifice, — men 
we knew, boys, the playthings still of our firesides. 
It was not the emergence made them, that sounded 
the alarm, that beat the drum, but it was the helps in 
the self that made them cool, resolute, courageous, 
equal to demand, that drew out of them what no 
circumstance, position, could have created. We rise 
within ourselves to the level of obligation, or we do 
not rise at all. The hour would have called them in 
vain, as it did call some, or would have betrayed them 
as it did betray some, but for the answering help 
within. That not only responded to demand, but was 
set at use ; and we all know in the more ordinary 
things of our own humdrum lives that, in the propor- 
tion as we use the helps that are in us, lean on our- 
selves, walk without a crutch, we make real success, 
right advance, true life. It is not those who make life 
to be a pushing out of tendrils, a feeling for supports, 
whose word is, " would you," " wouldn't you," but 
those who thrust themselves up straight and stalwart, 
self-reliant, who make the mark and take the prize, 
are men in fact as in semblance. They have what the 



212 



HELPS. 



tree has, great store of succulence at the roots, life 
from them for remotest branch and tiniest twig, supply 
which no use exhausts; but the more the demand for 
help, the more help there is. Use multiplies. The 
fount is exhaustless. The more one uses, the more 
he has to use ; and so he grows into the full maturity 
of power. Not despising the helps which come from 
every other quarter, let no man forget the helps that 
lie within. Learn to know, to test, to trust them ; for, 
without their consenting, the most favored being fails. 

The sailors in the little vessel in which Paul was 
wrecked not only had helps with them, but used them, 
knew how to use them. They answered their purpose, 
and saved them at that time. Sailing our sea of life, 
tossed and torn many times by the sudden and savage 
Euroclydon, let us see to it that we are not merely 
provided with, but can use helps. From the least to 
greatest, from greatest to least, let us not be blind to, 
let us not deny, the helps toward the fullest life which 
our God has bountifully supplied us with, placing them 
in our right hand and our left, in every place and every 
guise. They are too the undergirding of our craft, 
often in straits, with gaping seams, in a dark night, a 
stormy sea, near an uncertain shore. They make 
stanch what is weak or has been strained. They set 
us, encouraged, on our farther way, to new perils or to 
safe harbors. God gives helps. Christ blessed them. 
Let us use them, — use them as Jesus did, — not as side 
things, now and then, running to them in stress as 
exceptional and outside, but use them as living parts 
of every day's effort and life, 

June, 1875. 



XVIII. 



THE SILENT COMFORTER. 

" Sleep on now, and take your rest." — Matt, xxvi., 45. 

These are the words not of anger, not of reproach, 
of sympathy only, the pitying sympathy of Jesus. 
Possibly, a something of weariness in their tone, but 
the weariness that of his own struggle, not a weariness 
with their apathy or neglect. It was the word of the 
strong man to the weak, of a compassion brave enough 
to forget itself, to minister to other need. It said, 
"The evil is at hand, but, while it delays, take the boon 
God gives, rest, sleep," — tender words, the reflection 
of that tender spirit in him. What he threw into them 
was just what he was always throwing into life, in 
exact quantity, at the exact moment, to the exact need, 
and only what could advantage. I can well conceive 
that some other kind of man, having left his friends 
in charge, would have been enraged at what he would 
have considered their faithlessness, that he would have 
heaped upon them epithet and every upbraiding, — so 
much our own necessity takes precedence of every 
consideration with us. He would not consider them, 
their excuses, or appreciate their position at all, only 
himself and what he had demanded. Jesus had first 
thought for others. He did not weakly overlook the 
fact that he had given them a charge, or, more exactly, 



214 



THE SILENT COMFORTER. 



had expected of them the sleepless vigilance of friend- 
ship. He had taken the eleven with him from the 
table. From these, he had separated the three, taking 
them a little farther away. To the former, he had 
simply said, "Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder." 
To Peter and the sons of Zebedee, he gave the more 
exact charge, " My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even 
unto death : tarry ye here, and watch with me." The 
outer band or guard were simply to sit and wait : the 
inner band were to tarry and watch. Thrice, he came 
back. They were heavy with sleep. Could they not 
watch ? sadly he asks, not upbraidingly. He was yet 
tossed, troubled, yearning, feeling out for that human 
aid and sympathy we all yearn and feel out for, and 
just as vainly as we do. When his own victory was 
come, when he had established his own spirit, when he 
was ready to meet his doom, this is all forgotten, and 
his sympathy for them is roused ; and he says, " Sleep 
on now, and take your rest." What else could he say, 
what better could they do ? It was their need. The 
hour was upon them : they were better sleeping till it 
came. And it was well to sleep beneath the benedic- 
tion of the Christ. 

So always with Jesus was it, always adapting himself 
to the hour, his own necessities never obscuring the 
claims of others. To every class, to every man, to every 
condition, his ready sympathy, measured and just, — to 
Syro-Phcenician, Magdalen, Nicodemus, leper, sinner. 
And it was what won people so. There were many at 
that time pretending to do marvellous works, but we do 
not read of them as beloved by the people. Great deeds 
never make people beloved. Nobody would have loved 



THE SILENT COMFORTER. 



215 



Washington simply for gaining battles, and I think our 
last conqueror fails of lodgment in the popular affec- 
tion because, much as we may admire and rejoice in suc- 
cess, we fail to discover the nameless but resistless evi- 
dences of a great heart. We love traits, men. And 
Christ was loved because he loved, because he was full 
of that loving quality or essence which was running out 
in word and deed, and almost from garment hem, so 
natural, so inevitable, so full and free as to be almost 
unconscious, never falling short in its measure, never 
making mistake in its application. 

And this not a divine quality, not something excep- 
tionally his, not something too high for us, not what we 
shall vainly wish for and struggle to attain. A very 
human virtue, in him perfected, in us the power of per- 
fecting it. The germs of it lie in our common nature. 
They spring neither from civilization nor from Chris- 
tianity. They exist in savage natures. Civilization, 
Christianity, are but educators, not creators. In us all, 
the existence of a spirit of sympathy ; in us all, the 
power to aid men by our sympathies ; and in you and in 
me, as we sit here, or as we live in the Christian commu- 
nity, a longing to minister to men with our sympathies. 
There is an outgo of sympathetic emotion daily, and, 
better and deeper than that, such as perceptibly qualify 
the spirit of our day. We are not so desperately self- 
ish as theology and only too much of our conduct 
would make us out : we are not pachydermatous, tough- 
hided, as regards the interests of our fellows, certainly 
not as regards their sufferings. Indifferent enough, 
pressing hard in the rough-and-tumble hurly-burly of 
every-day ambition and career, our better part crusted 



2l6 



THE SILENT COMFORTER. 



over by success and struggle, but all our indifference 
dropped, our injustice forgotten, our better self roused 
the moment that the fact of want or suffering can be 
brought before us. Perhaps too apt at times to be 
unreasoning in our sympathies as before we were in 
our neglects. Bring tangibly before any man, lead him 
where he shall see with his own eyes, or let the tale of 
distress come so that it carries credence, you need no 
arguing, no persuading ; the conviction is in the fact, 
and he is ready, anxious to assist, or, where assistance 
is impossible, quick with his sentiment of compassion. 
Every day, man's daily troubles beat against other 
human hearts ; and they respond on that- note to which 
our common humanity is keyed. And when some great 
catastrophe such as from time to time startles and ap- 
palls, some great sob from the bosom of the ocean, sub- 
dues continents with its solemn mystery, rouses us from 
our security, carries swift death to many beloved, sor- 
row to a thousand homes, and horror to every heart, one 
almost feels a pride in this quickly touched common 
nature, bowing itself in sympathy, feeling so keenly 
with and for those made near kin for the time by the 
great fellowship of suffering. It may be true that in 
ordinary time, in the pressure and struggle, in thought 
of merchandise and form and the anxious cares of exist- 
ence, we regard too little our fellow in his ordinary 
stress and want, are careless about adding unnecessarily 
to the complicated burdens men about us bear, or, with 
something of grim determination, bind them ourselves ; 
but let the reverse come that comes sharply, that stirs 
and rouses the dormant better man, that touches the 
universal human chord, and you find under the slumber- 



THE SILENT COMFORTER. 



217 



ing ashes of the deadest seeming heart glow and burn 
the fires of human sympathy. The poet's truth, — 

" One touch of nature makes the whole world kin," 

will bear broadening. The world feels its kinship in 
suffering. Men's troubles prove that there is some- 
thing in man's brotherhood. Their cries reach respon- 
sive hearts, our tears rise for the dead, our sympathies 
go out toward the living. He is very dead, and had 
better be that quite, who never rouses out of himself to 
feel for his suffering fellow. 

Our real trouble is not that we do not feel, but that 
we do not know how to let the feeling out, so that it 
shall do justice to ourselves and be of help to others. 
How shall we make our feeling for another available, 
how become ministrant of the balm we fain would 
carry, how know the best time and way ? I know that 
something in me quickly responds to human misfort- 
une ; I know that I am always longing to be of use, 
pained to stand so idly by ; that I would gladly put my 
arm around or beneath, and let the sufferer put full 
weight on me, or press lips surcharged with the very 
soul of sympathy against those parched with unan- 
swered prayers. I know that feet and heart would run 
nimble errands, that hand and tongue ache to be doing 
something that shall relieve. Forgive the first person, 
singular. It is what each one of you knows, what each 
one of you feels, the whole being quivering in its ear- 
nestness to be of use, to stay the torrent of event, to 
stanch the tear, to ward off the blow, to bear some 
part, to do something, nay, even to bear the whole. 
Show the way by which really we may share the bur- 



2l8 



THE SILENT COMFORTER. 



den, and the whole community will vie in effort. Tell 
me how I may lighten or lift another's load, and I were 
less than human to refuse. Just here comes in the 
barrier, here we are baffled by the limitings a divine 
hand has placed, here our impotence begins. In life's 
affairs, in life's career, its stress, its strife, one may 
oftentimes come in opportunely, see the thing to be 
done and do it, confirm the wavering and set him on a 
sure place, or point the way and go with one in it. 
These heart-griefs lie within a province in which we 
have no place, in which human help is vain. All we 
can do is to feel. A few who are near and dear and 
chosen, and have opportunity, and can see just where 
and how, may become, do become, blessed ministrants 
through that voiceless language that lies in considerate 
acts, in tones and looks, and all the uncatalogued min- 
istrations, active and sympathetic, love so well knows 
how to devise, — which, done so sweetly and so kindly 
and so naturally, seem done unconsciously, and in that 
seeming carry the half of their beatitude. But, outside 
that circle, little can be done; and men must stand 
idly by, knowing that they are impotent to relieve. 
We are apt to think, till taught by experience, that 
speech is the great sympathizer or vehicle of sympathy, 
that true feeling necessarily has voice, that to be dumb 
is not to feel. For one, human sorrow strikes me 
dumb, occasion masters the man. I think God wants 
all speech to himself then, and his speech is in the 
event to the heart's own silence. " He talked to me 
so beautifully," some say. It seems to me that beauti- 
ful speech is for other occasion ; and on such occasion 
man's speech, however it may tone expected phrases, 



THE SILENT COMFORTER. 



219 



is but babbling. You may speak with the tongue of 
men and of angels, and, though it be not as sounding 
brass and tinkling cymbal, yet it has no might. Speech 
is no burden-bearer. That wipes out nothing, soothes 
nothing, bears nothing. Job's friends were right. 
They didn't begin to talk, to do anything until after 
the first sharpness was over ; and then they did what 
seemed the best for strengthening him, first recognized 
his great sorrow, and then, in their way, sought to 
bring out the lessons of it, and to help him bear it. 
Jesus did the same, only he had this one great advan- 
tage : there was always something he could do at once. 
His sympathy could take tangible shape, he could lift 
up the widow's son or the ruler's daughter, or by pres- 
ence and counsel strengthen and cheer his disciples. 
It was very little that he ever said. 

I think that the tenderest and truest, the most di- 
rect and helpful way of meeting sorrow or suffering is 
simply to recognize it. That should be our human 
prompting, and it will be found about the best human 
help. When I find, as find I shall, without parade of 
feeling or speech, a recognition of my condition, that 
he who holds me by the hand enters into the fact of 
my suffering, allows for it, then have I the beginning 
of comfort. And these are not the mere words" they may 
seem, as those know who have had experience. It has 
a good deal been thought that our Christian religion 
demanded that we sternly put our hands as it were at 
the throat of every sorrow, and hold it down till we 
have taken its life away. You will find at just the time 
men need to be met and treated with the most consid- 
erate delicacy that they are called upon to stiffen them- 



220 



THE SILENT COMFORTER. 



selves back to the very sternest endurance. Men and 
women think it the right thing to upbraid you for giv- 
ing way to feeling, and talk about want of faith, and 
exhort you to put your trust in God, or it may be " the 
merits of Christ," and harrow you with the suggestion 
that all the writhing of your human agonies only shows 
that you have no faith, or that you have done some sin, 
and make their consolations into outrage and insult 
both to your suffering and the God by whose will you 
suffer. They do not recognize the suffering in you : 
you are only somebody for them to let off their phrases 
at, sometimes, I think, their cant or impatience. And 
ministers do that, and preach unhuman and inhuman 
private sermons to a harassed, tortured spirit, madly 
unwilling to recognize the under human fact of grief, 
which by God's will exists, and by God's law must 
have its way. Such sons of consolation — Heaven help 
the mark! — all they ordained to be in the service of 
ordination are instructed they must be, if they are to 
do their duty. I remember that after experience had 
taught me what sorrow is and what the limits are to 
sympathy, what one may hope for and what he cannot 
find, I wrote an afflicted friend, one of our widest 
known and best-respected clergymen, to whom trouble 
was not new : " The human heart has its griefs which 
must have their way. Faith has no control over them. 
They must rule us and tear us before we can fall back 
upon and get strength from faith." His reply was, 
" What you say is very true : the human heart is one 
thing, and faith is quite another; but it is not every 
one who knows it." But every one should know it. 
We ought not to go on expecting, demanding of others 



THE SILENT COMFORTER. 221 

or ourselves what we cannot have, doubly wretched 
under distress because we do not find at the moment's 
need what we supposed the moment would not only 
demantl, but supply. It is what the soul suffers, its 
dark way, its heavy burden, its sore trial, its weakness, 
distress, doubt, even unreasonableness, that must be 
recognized as the first relieving work of sympathy, — 
just that recognition Jesus, so wise in all things, had of 
those humble friends sleeping in the garden. And 
after recognition, which is in itself a strengthening, 
may come, by occasion, a varied ministry, not of word, 
but work ; and happy he who has it in his power, in the 
intimate and wise intercourse of daily confidence and 
society, to discharge the nameless and numberless in- 
direct acts of kindness which tide one over the severi- 
ties of his distress, and help him to stand again and 
renew the activities and meet the fresh obligations of 
life. And then, if you are a sufferer, you must not ex- 
pect too much of sympathy : if you are a sympathizer, 
you must not attempt too much. Do not feel that oc- 
casion asks or allows of some great thing. The least 
thing may often hold most soul. The best things of 
the kingdom, no more than the kingdom itself, come 
with observation. A simple hand grasp, the tone in 
which one said, " God bless you," have done me more 
good than all orations. If not gold and silver, they 
were frankincense and myrrh. Sometimes, silence is 
the truest expression as well as greatest benediction, 
as the poet says it is with the angels ; and wise indeed 
is he who knows when to refrain as how to speak. At 
most there is but little one may do, and that little lies 
among things so trifling that the unpractised eye 



222 



THE SILENT COMFORTER. 



might easily overlook them, and men of the world 
would think there was nothing in them. If you can 
carry a little sunlight from the outer world into a sick 
chamber or the sunlight of your own spirit where other 
spirits sit in the eclipse ; if you can take a smile in 
where is only gloom ; if, without direct word or deed, 
you make it felt that yours is a really human sympathy, 
— do you not bring the best, and what the sufferer 
learns to feel is the all that you can bring ? 

They brought flowers and hung them in my cham- 
ber before eyes weary with the long day and night and 
the worrying dance of everything that in strange maze 
perplexed, and words cannot tell how their compensat- 
ing colors soothed my weariness and bade down the 
tormenting demons and brought rest. 

And so it is among the graver things. One does not 
want some great thing done : one knows instinctively 
that no great thing can be done. Only he wants the 
little compensating thing of sympathy to steady and 
restore the unbalanced self, and help him with cooled 
and even head take his place again at duties he had 
dropped. It is not to have our burden lifted that we 
expect, but the chance ourselves to recover poise, so 
that, though we may stagger beneath, we shall not be 
crushed by it. 

It is not worth while ever to repress the instinct 
of sympathy, and forbear the little thing your spirit 
prompts. Many a thing you offer timidly will come to 
you again, bringing its full sheaf. We are all near of 
kin, and we do not want to be estranged, and we can 
come nigh in sorrow as never in joy. Sorrow makes 
quick friendships. Genuine sympathy never intrudes, 



THE SILENT COMFORTER. 



223 



rarely mistakes. It is keen in perception, gentle in 
administration. Delicate and tender its touch as 
an infant's breath would be upon a gaping wound. 
Though it may not say, " Peace, be still ! " with the 
authoritative word of Jesus, may it not help the 
bruised and troubled to sleep and rest ? 

And I have long looked at it as a most blessed com- 
pensation to our own troubles that they teach us how 
to sympathize with others ; yes, they teach us also 
what sympathy itself is. Like so many other things, 
that is the child of experience. Only they who have 
suffered can know what suffering is. Only by suffering 
is it that we know what sympathy is, what are the 
medicaments it can minister, what are its needs. Men 
say, "I sympathize with you"; and they are honest 
and think they do, but they cannot, unless" they have 
gone along that self-same way. 

I have had men say to me in their own troubles, " I 
used to think I felt for and with others, but now I see 
I did not." You can only really sympathize in what 
you have yourself felt ; and you will find that uncon- 
sciously you turn from the language of those you know 
have had no experience, and crave even the silence of 
those whom you know have before you gone down into 
the abysses and drank of the bitter waters. 

You may throw all your heart into it, by every imagi- 
nation, but, if it have not actually pressed its hot and 
heavy hand upon you, you cannot know what affliction 
is, you cannot know the sympathy that starts quick 
within one as he feels that another has come within 
the great guild and mystery of grief, nor can your very 
truest word give that something of nameless, unutter- 



224 



THE SILENT COMFORTER. 



able support which comes from one who is known to 
have been a sufferer. In every circle, you will find 
those who seem singled out, whose society is craved, 
who get to be the ones sent for and relied upon, not 
because of any eloquent tongue, or much doing, or any 
special grace of tact, but because of the grace that is 
only of experience, that teaches them just what to do 
and when to forbear. 

There are some faces on which sorrow has written 
that which is more comforting than all beatitudes ; 
some tones that have a music in them joy never has ; 
some manners it would seem only angels could put on, 
and all learned under the stern and fiery, the purify- 
ing, elevating ministry of trouble, the school in which 
souls are taught life's holiest duties, and led into life's 
grandest issues. Doesn't it show how far we fall short 
even of fidelity to our own convictions, when we have 
such reluctance to come under the disciplines we know 
to be essential to lifting us out of the lowness of the 
flesh into almoners to other men of the best teachings 
of God ? 

It is a divine gift and privilege, this power of sym- 
pathy ; and it has a divine mission, — divine in that it 
leads us among the superior things, and shows us how 
we, too, may handle the things that ally us with God. 

Real sympathy is no native gift : it is beyond that. 
The finest feelings, the most exquisite adapting of our- 
selves to others' stand-point, do not give it. It is a 
thing of culture, and its crowning culture is from sor- 
rows ourselves have met and have wisely borne. But 
that sympathy, even keenest, truest, quickest, cannot 
do everything. It is strong, but it is limited. Where- 



THE SILENT COMFORTER. 



225 



ever man essays to help his fellow-man, he finds him- 
self shut in by inexorable limitings. There is only so 
much that he can do. 

There is a divine decree, "Thus far, no farther." In 
the sharp hour of trial, as the poet says : — 

" Fain would earth's tried and dear 
Save in this hour. 
But art not thou more near, 

Art thou not love and power ? 
Vain is the help of man ; but thou 
Canst send deliverance even now." 

It is all shut up in that. The only and the greatest 
thing man is capable of is trust in God. Blessed the 
man who knows his capacity and asserts it, and grows 
from the radiant trust of childhood to the chastened 
trust of maturity. Only as we trust, do we indeed 
live, coming to be content, though we cannot fill the 
yawning abysses or fathom the fathomless will, in the 
conviction that God is overall and overall for good. 
Let us do the little that we may : let us stand by each 
other in our troubles with everything that is possible 
in human aid ; but let us not forget that, where man 
fails, there God begins, and that he, notwithstanding 
human failure, is able with unutterable peace and 
blessing to bless those who put their trust in him. 



Dec. 7, 1873. 



XIX. 



FRAGRANT LIVES. 

"And the house was filled with the odor." — John xii., 3. 

An odor is among the subtlest things in the .material 
world. No one has yet been able to analyze or demon- 
strate the essential action of a perfume. Gas can be 
weighed, but not scents. The smallest known creat- 
ures, the very monads of life, can be caught by a mi- 
croscope lens, and made to deliver up the secrets of 
their organizations ; but what it is that emanates from 
the pouch of the musk, that for years and years retains 
its penetrating odor, and what it is that the warm sum- 
mer air brings to us from the flowers, or what it is that 
is locked up in the sandal-wood, no man has yet been 
able to determine, so fine, so subtle, so imponderable, 
it has eluded both our most delicate weights and meas- 
ures and our strongest senses. The four Evangelists 
tell us, all of them, that at a feast there was an anoint- 
ing of Jesus. They tell it with a good deal of variety. 
Even discrepancy of detail, even the two who were 
present. And they place it at different times in his 
life. Generally, it has been supposed that there were 
two similar occasions, — one near the beginning of his 
ministry, one at its close. But this seems improbable; 
and both Matthew and John, the two present, agree as 
to the time as just prior to the arrest. The more nat- 



FRAGRANT LIVES. 



227 



ural thing is to consider the incident one and the same, 
the differences to be with the narrators, not in the nar- 
rative. 

Besides the other things told of the ointment, that it 
was of spikenard, in an alabaster box, and very costly, 
John has thought it worth while to add that the odor of 
it filled the house, and so somehow has added, in a few 
words, an element of peculiar and abiding interest. It 
attracts our attention, and gives us quite other thought 
than if the ointment had simply been costly. I do not 
believe we should have thought much of that. It 
would not have made us read the account a second time, 
or dwell upon it in fancy or memory. But, the moment 
you read that the odor of it filled the house, you are 
all attention. That is another matter. In all times, 
among all peoples, perfumes have held high rank. The 
sense of smell is a peculiarly refined and delicate enjoy- 
ment. John adds a fact that gives exquisite finish to 
the story. 

It was not a very big house. Houses at that time 
were not apt to be, though of the better sort. Simon's 
might be the best house in the village, and yet not such 
a one as we should select as the abode of a man of in- 
fluence or of property. Lazarus would have had a less 
lordly home. Never mind that. John who was there, 
when he came many years after to think it over, to tell 
about it, remembered that all through the house was 
the perfume from the broken alabaster box. He seems 
to have forgotten other incidents, or to have considered 
them not worth repeating ; but this was still fresh in 
his memory, worth telling. All the guests had been 
sensible of that delicious odor which filled the house ; 



228 



FRAGRANT LIVES. 



and it came to him again as he gathered together the 
threads of remembrance, fresh to his old age as then 
to his early manhood. What is it about an odor 
that makes it a lingerer in memory, like the sound of a 
voice, which will come back to you and mightily move 
you over the dead waste of years, and recall things 
long slumbering, and that would have continued to 
slumber but for the resurrection power these impon- 
derable, subtile things have ? What is this mysterious 
tying together of spirit and sense ? Not the odor of 
the vase alone has attracted the ages. The odor of 
the deed far more. The house was filled with the 
fragrance of spikenard : the world has been filled with 
the fragrance of gratitude. It was not the offering of 
a broken alabaster box, but the pleading of a broken 
heart, the tribute of a contrite spirit to one who had 
inspired her sin, her penitence, with confidence and 
hope. Next day, next hour, the invisible powers had 
absorbed to themselves, had scattered, wafted away, 
the perfume of the ointment. A stranger coming in 
had not been conscious of that which but now had 
made all glad, strong for a little and then vanishing 
away. But the deed, from its unexhausted store, has 
been pouring out its perfume till the whole world is 
full of it. What Jesus said of it is true. " Whereso- 
ever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, 
there shall also this that this woman hath done be told 
for a memorial of her." Time but gives it more and 
more, — is not a destroyer, but a renewer, a preserver. 
The cunning, grateful work of art perished : the gra- 
cious deed of a loving soul endures, — is not merely one 
of the touching things in history, redolent in un- 



FRAGRANT LIVES. 



229 



speakable delicacy, but with genial influence appeals to 
the best spirit in man, and encourages it with the 
brightest hope. 

Just what was that tribute ? — 

The silent eloquence of a heart yearning to make 
some expression of the obligation she felt she was 
under. It was a woman's way, without noise, without 
observation, doing as the impulse prompted, and se- 
lecting the most delicate thing to express the most 
delicate sentiment. She did not know anything about 
his burial. That was the limited interpretation which 
the foreboding spirit of Jesus put upon it. True 
enough to him, not true at all to her. He knew that 
in her the act had quite other cause, with her quite 
other significance. With her, it was a tribute of love, 
a love that she could not utter for a loving deed done. 
We all know that deeds have to come in where words 
fail, simplest deeds to phrase for us deepest sentiment. 
I put my arm about a sufferer, in joy I give a kiss ; 
and they mean what and tell what no language can be 
fashioned into. Mary, or whoever the woman was, or 
whatever her sin had been, whatever her cause for 
gratitude, had received of Jesus that which drew her to 
him as no ordinary way would tell; and, just as frank- 
incense and myrrh had been the costly tribute at his 
cradle, the things most expressive of homage and alle- 
giance, the costly spikenard of India was made to tell 
of the homage and allegiance of one whose heart-sore 
had been healed, whose hopes raised, whose pardon 
given. If it were at Simon's house, as Matthew says, 
perhaps there was some purpose, also of remedying 
Simon's churlish neglect. If at the house of Lazarus, 



230 



FRAGRANT LIVES. 



as John says, and it was the other Mary, gratitude for 
the life restored had its part in the offering. 

Either way, any way, it was the only voice she could 
find for her womanly devotion and faith. Jesus turned 
it into consonance with his one leading thought, but no 
more than the apostles was. she thinking of his death. 
The real significance of the act is in the loving grati- 
tude, simple-hearted confidence, that, from whatever 
cause, lay behind and prompted it. As the odor of 
the oil pervaded the house, so the odor of the deed, 
outlasting occasion, has pervaded all time ; and we have 
Christ's word for it that it shall pervade all time, an 
exhaustless centre, radiating a subtle influence forever. 

There is no odor so permanent, so pervasive, as that 
from a good deed. It is that, the odor of loving and 
gracious deeds, that is the secret of Christ's power, 
that has made him the mighty influence he is. We 
are not content to take any thing about him in a natu- 
ral way, but must contrive some theory grand enough 
to satisfy our conceptions of what should be. 

We want to make God do things largely, dramati- 
cally, forgetting that he loves to work out his issues 
simply and by small things. 

We extol the lowliness of Christ, but we forget the 
lowliness of the things with which Christ wrought and 
built. We make his gospel a gospel of dogmas : that 
seems worthy. It is a gospel of deeds, not of grand 
schemes and beliefs, but of simple doing, loving doing, 
the simplicity of a genial life. The influence that has 
gone from his life, and not the persuasiveness that has 
fallen from his lips, has given him his place. We put 
weight upon language : it is iu life. We could spare 



FRAGRANT LIVES. 



his words, golden as they are. His words alone, like 
the words of so many golden-lipped, would have fallen 
to the ground and died. 

They would have established nothing, however wise 
and eloquent. The virtue was not in them ; but the 
virtue lay in what he was day by day doing, the way 
he was living, the character he was manifesting, and 
the hand of help he was holding out to every manner 
of suffering man. So thoroughly was he pervaded by 
the great spirit of life that he could not help giving 
out lice, as the flower cannot help giving out fragrance. 
Its perfume was in all : its fulness filled him. That 
was no exceptional condition which is spoken of by the 
Evangelist, when he felt virtue go from him. Virtue 
went out of him, not once alone, but always, every- 
where, to all. It was always exuding, as fragrance is 
always exuding from the rose. The life of virtue was 
in him. The rose, the violet, the lily, cannot help be- 
ing sweet. Life expresses itself so, because the soul 
of sweetness is in them'. That is the language of their 
souls. You cannot approach them, bring them in con- 
tact with your daily lives, but this sweet thing in them 
comes out to meet you. No surface thing, no soon 
exhausted thing, but a thing in their hearts which dies 
only when they die. And there had been no influence 
in Christ's virtue, no life to it, no living, outliving odor, 
had it been, as so much that we call virtue is, the mere 
expression of superficial sentiment, the thing of spasm, 
or occasion. He never could have filled the world with 
the deathless aroma of a life, save he had had in him 
the deathless source of that aroma, in exhaustless sup- 
ply, giving itself for each and for all. He was full him- 



FRAGRANT LIVES. 



self, and because of his fulness filled, could not help 
filling. 

We are all the time in life wanting to do some good, 
and wondering that we fail. We fail, because we are 
not first full of the spirit of that we want to do or 
give. We undertake to do when we have nothing to 
do from. We are dry springs, empty reservoirs. We 
have no fountain-head. We have never established a 
source of supply. We have nothing to fall back upon. 
We cannot pour, fill. Mere sunshine would amount 
to little, were there not great sunshine quality laid 
away" in the great sun. The supply would soon go out, 
and leave us but an empty blank of cold and darkness ; 
and so mere casting " sweetness and light," the power 
an actor or hypocrite or a very shallow person might 
have, amounts to little, except sweetness and light fill 
us. It is a stinted surface quantity, soon runs dry. It 
does not do much good to shed a beneficence which is 
the mere reflection of a surface. It must be a raying 
out from within deeps. Milton says of himself, " I was 
confirmed in this opinion, that he who would not be 
frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable 
things ought himself to be a true poem; that is, a 
composition and pattern of the best and honorablest 
things." Before we can be the best and do the best, 
it is all important that we be ourselves filled with 
" sweetness and light," have the fount of them in us, 
more important that we be full than that we attempt 
to fill. We fill others by now and then accidental 
words and acts, kindnesses, sympathies, forbearances. 
We fill ourselves when we have an all-the-time spirit of 
beauty and truth. The outflow of that makes sure of 



FRAGRANT LIVES. 



233 



the good to others. Our mistake, to try to do separate 
acts instead of trying to get the spirit whose inevitable 
expression shall be these coveted things. We waste 
ourselves on these, and get discouraged over them, in- 
stead of striking clean and bold for the under life. 
The men and women whose lives are other peoples' 
strength or repose are not men and women seeking to 
do separate things at separate times, but those who 
have got and are filled with the life of life, who know 
there must be a fountain of supply, flowing by no arti- 
ficial means, itself from no exhausted source. We 
have to get very far back, away from low things, and 
close against the High One : we must be living and 
succulent branches of the living and true Vine. No 
life, no fruit, otherwise, — some promise, some show 
perhaps, but the fig-tree at Jerusalem gate is no more 
really barren than we, if our lack be the very soul of 
virtue. First fill yourselves with the spirit of good 
deed, as God first filled the great urn of the sun, and 
then shed abroad — then you must shed abroad — the 
influence of that thing which is in you, a part of your 
very life. Much as we may need to fill the sphere in 
which we move with what is best and brightest, we 
more need to first fill ourselves, and then we shall fill 
our sphere. Become sweetness and light, and we give 
them inevitably. Of what we are, we impart. It was 
all the influence Christ had, that of his being. Except 
for the grace and truth of his life, the grace and truth 
of his lips were nothing. 

It is not the filling the house with the odor of our 
lives that we should think of, but the filling ourselves. 
And when that is done, as from the least hem-touch of 



234 



FRAGRANT LIVES. 



the Saviour's garments healing and strength flowed, so 
from the simplest speaking and doing goes out that 
which no man may weigh or measure, catch up or con- 
fine, but which is as the life of life, — the inextricable, 
invisible thread, tying into divine harmony the every 
part of being. Shakspere tells how far a candle 
throws its light, sending its central life into outlying 
* waves of darkness, wave after wave, and transmuting 
with a kindly glow the ugly pall that hangs before. 
The good deed, he tells us, is like it ; and you can many 
times see it stealing its quiet but conquering way, till 
it has suppressed the evil, and wrapped the moral dark- 
ness about it in its own garment. So the odor of that 
broken alabaster box stole out into the air of that 
home, fetid with the vapors of self-righteousness and 
cant, inhospitality and pride. They were all quelled 
before it. They could not live in its presence, must 
hide themselves, at least. It was no self-asserting, 
pungent odor, with swift breath and offence, smiting, 
charging, and bearing down and laying low, but pure 
and subtile as the night aroma of flowers is that pos- 
sesses the atmosphere, you know not how, steals in 
and is, before you are conscious, the one spirit and 
power. And all those men sitting there, the honored 
as the tolerated guest, and the common, curious villager, 
felt it, were filled with it, not the house only, but they 
in the house. But there was an essence in that broken 
box. It did not greet the sense, but it found the heart. 
The house was filled with it ; the men there were filled 
with it, the world has been filled with it ever since, the 
ages are to be, so long as ages come and go. There 
had been many a thing done that day in Jerusalem 



FRAGRANT LIVES. 



235 



homes, in the houses of the happy and the great, that 
won applause, and seemed to men worthy of honor and 
remembrance. But poetry, painting, sculpture, rever- 
ent recognition and affection, did not hasten to embalm 
them. Time has forgotten them. No man desired to 
be their chronicler. But the act of a sinning woman, 
who put all that she had into a costly offering, and then 
poured it over the feet of Jesus, the breath of the ages 
has taken up and whispered it to ages as they come ; 
and nowhere that the name of Jesus goes but goes 
with it the sweet act of a gratitude that expressed 
itself in the fragrance that stole out from a broken box. 
To what higher significance, remembering it, may you 
lift the poet's well-remembered lines : — 

"You may break, you may shatter the vase, if you will, 
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still." 

We want to make our lives of best service. We can 
only do it by fixing first attention upon ourselves. 
Let everything be right in us, and nothing that goes 
from us can be wrong. Let everything in us be sweet, 
and everything from us must be sweetness. In the 
alabaster box, the power to pervade the house with 
odor ; in the true heart, the power to pervade life with 
that which, as a balm, shall soothe all hearts. We 
know how full the world is of bright lives and kindly 
deeds, and how their influence stretches away from 
man to man, from age to age. The odor of them fills 
the descending years. Men live nobler and happier 
because of them. With secret subtilty, they penetrate, 
reforming character, renewing society, driving out old 
miasma and pollution by their better power, disinfect- 



236 



FRAGRANT LIVES. 



ing the corruption and decay in which men so much 
content themselves to live. 

In these early summer days, the air is fragrant with 
the breath of flowers. The blossom-laden trees shed 
forth their sweetness, and the lilacs and the lily distil 
luscious perfume to a delighted sense. Odors upon 
every side gladden even the waste places. The very 
soul of nature life speaks in them. They are the out. 
goings of its spirit. Just that may our lives become, 
odor-bearers to fill even the waste places, only will 
we have spirits in us, — living spirits of grace and 
truth and purity and love, the fount whence a never- 
failing outgo may bear those delicious influences 
which shall make the sterile hearts and lives of men 
what the sterile earth is before the abounding life of 
the sweetly scented summer. 

Not a good deed anywhere, not a self-sacrificing act, 
not a genuine kindliness, but the odor of it, fills, de- 
lights, stimulates. Our homes are filled with the 
sweetness when we are true to them, our own lives 
and other men's lives when we carry that true living 
abroad with us, and make them feel it. So the great 
kingdom grows by little and little, so the true graces 
get their mastery, so the incense God loves, the fra- 
grance of devout and earnest and growing and unself- 
ish lives, fills the days, blesses us, and makes us sources 
of blessing. 

June 3, 1876. 



XX. 



WHAT SHE COULD. 

" She hath done what she could." — Mark xiv., 8. 

Only few words these, yet how full of meaning! 
And, coming from a Saviour's lips, how like a beatitude, 
a foretaste of the "Well done!" which is God's wel- 
come to the eternal mansions. What had she done ? 
She had not gone to the Sanhedrim, or to Herod, plead- 
ing with her true womanliness in defence of the sainted 
one she felt Jesus to be. She had not defended him at 
Nazareth, where his neighbors and friends had for- 
gotten themselves. She would not appeal to Caesar in 
his behalf ; nor in any of his perils had she stood by 
him. These were not her sphere. These she could 
not have done, had she been pure. She was an out- 
cast ; but something living, loving, and true, and pure 
yet, despite the taint, told her that, could she reach 
Jesus, she might have peace. He was at Simon's 
house, — perhaps the hardest place for her to enter, 
unless it were Simon's heart. No matter. There was 
a thing she could do, that a woman in her situation 
could best do. She had bought this costly ointment 
for her own adorning, to help her in the arts of her 
trade, to make more seductive charms fatal to herself 
as to others. She could pour that out on Jesus, the 
costliest thing, perhaps all she had. Trembling, eager, 



238 



WHAT SHE COULD. 



forgetting Simon and the rest, thinking of seeing only 
Jesus, her impatient hands broke off the long, slender, 
sealed neck of the bottle, and anointed with its wel- 
come fragrance the weary feet to which the haughty 
host had denied the simpler charity of water. It re- 
freshed not the body merely, but the spirit of Jesus. 
Its perfume pervaded not the house only, but the 
breath of the ages. He did not refuse his gratitude 
to the sinner. She had befriended him, now he be- 
friended her. She had outraged the sanctimonious 
Simon, but he had outraged the Christ ; and he got 
rebuke such as man never had, and she got blessing. 
"She hath done what she could." There were not 
many whom Jesus praised ; and yet there are a few brief 
and striking eulogies pronounced by him of which, per- 
haps, this is the briefest, the simplest, and the grand- 
est, the most remarkable and the most complete. You 
remember the glowing eulogy upon John, in which 
there is a something nigh enthusiasm ; you remember 
the eulogy upon Peter, in which there seems a some- 
thing like overestimate of the man ; you remember 
that upon the young lawyer, more in look and tone 
than language. They are all remarkable as coming 
from such a source, — from one who had no words of 
ceremony, who did not waste himself upon useless oc- 
casion, but whose every tone had a purpose, and all 
whose words, strong, emphatic, incisive as well as de- 
cisive, were utterances of severe truth. He did not 
hesitate to blame where blame was required, and as 
little did he hesitate to encourage, and blessed were 
they whose reward was his approval. One of the strik- 
ing things about the Saviour was his oversetting of 



WHAT SHE COULD. 



239 



values, his putting down what was high and exalting 
what was low. He was never dazzled by name, posi- 
tion, or deed, but judged everything by its own stand- 
ard, and to each gave its special award, not as the 
world gave. The one very noticeable thing with him 
was the high virtue that he detected in little deeds, 
the strong encomium he passed on things men had 
never before noticed. Many widows had dropped their 
two mites into the treasury ; but the busy men had 
never stopped to think that it was all their living, or 
to commend the charity, while they had approved the 
lordly gifts of lordly men, had worshipped all that 
made loud pretence. The kingdom of Jesus was the 
kingdom of circles, motives, not deeds, facts, not 
sounds ; and so, when Mary came with her costly un- 
guent, he read at once the sentiment which inspired it, 
and blessed her deed. It was not great and glittering 
things that Jesus asked, only of each and all what they 
could. 

That is asking a good deal, however ; and it is saying 
a good deal when you can say of any, "She hath done 
what she could." Who of us all comes up to the stand- 
ard established by these words ? Who exhausts the 
capacity in him ? Who, when he lies down at night, or 
makes the review of life honestly, can say that there 
was no more he could do ? We may have worked in- 
dustriously, accumulated largely, got place and honor, 
have worn ourselves out in doing with hands or brain, 
while in the larger doing of the heart, in all the finer 
sympathies and nobler charities, in all that tests hu- 
manity and affiliates with God, we have done misera- 
bly little, it may be absolutely nothing. The duty of 



240 



WHAT SHE COULD. 



doing, not great things, but what we can, is the very- 
top and sum of human obligation. One can't get be- 
yond it : one ought not to stop this side of it. It means 
the doing of everything you can, and chiefly it means 
the doing of things that issue out of the heart toward 
God and toward man. It means the setting aside of 
the self, and laying out one's best energies in unselfish, 
not to be requited, service. It means not merely occu- 
pation, industry, attainment, but noble industry, occu- 
pation, attainment ; not merely busy hands, but busy 
affections, sympathies, purposes. You cannot sum its 
almost limitless significance. What one can do ! — this 
inspired, immortal principle, which God struck out in 
the beginning, and eternity is to ripen, — this restless, 
aspiring creation, we feel ourselves to be! What we 
can do ! Why, we put it as a child's maxim, " There's 
no such word as can't"; and if we believe that, and 
that there is such a word as can, if we probe and know 
ourselves, as we may know by probing, we shall see 
that there is hardly height or depth impossible to a fear- 
less, resolved soul, owning its allegiance and feeling its 
' accountability to God. The fact is, we do not do what 
we can, because we will not tax our hearts. We tax 
our brains, we tax our hands. We overload and wear 
out mind and body. But we do not treat the heart that 
way. There is not stress and strain of duty upon it. 
We are too apt to shrink from anything that is going 
to be a pain or a burden to it, and, instead of cultivat- 
ing our sympathies, looking into distresses, visiting sick 
and poor, widow and fatherless, we shut off our hearts 
from any appeal, give a trifle, or send the suppliant on 
to some other hand. A minister has a grand chance 



WHAT SHE COULD. 



241 



to know how much of this sending people on is done, 
how cheaply and how meanly sometimes people pass 
along to him matters they should themselves, as men, 
attend to ; how ready other people are to think they do 
all they are called to, if they send people to him. As if 
it were any more his obligation to drop his work, take 
up his time, spend his money, hunting up all manner 
of cases, alleviating all manner of distresses ! That is 
a duty you cannot delegate, you do not pay for. It is 
a duty which belongs to each. The suffering that is 
about us loses largely its power as a moral agent, be- 
cause even the best disposed of us shrink so from see- 
ing and knowing it, and in that shrinking learn to say, 
in the words James condemns, "Be ye warmed and 
filled," rather than ourselves seeing the hunger and 
knowing the cold and understanding the actual thing 
that suffers and asks. There could not open up a more 
valuable chapter of human experience to any one than 
that which would be revealed by the investigation of 
any case of suffering. It is what all ought to face 
themselves to, as a part of their training as brothers in 
the human family, part of their debt to God for his 
mercies. Not that every man may examine every case, 
but that he should not content himself with turning 
away, with giving a trifle, with belonging to a charity or 
organization, but should keep his heart warm, his char- 
ities broad, his sympathies true, by actual knowledge 
of what poverty and pain are, that he may know that 
all is not sin or shiftlessness, that he may realize 
how misfortunes crowd upon and multiply in some 
lives, and may so make himself a happier as well as 
wiser man. If exemption from the like will not make 



242 



WHAT SHE COULD. 



him both wiser and happier, why, he is not fit to be 
the child of God, and cannot have great hope of the 
kingdom. 

But this will not cover the broad demand of the 
phrase. Life has many spheres, many occasions, a 
very various demand for doing. Every man has his 
endowment, his ability, his talent, his gift. It is that 
which marks him from every other man. It is that 
which makes him an agent in society, in the world, in 
the universe. It is that which makes it possible to 
meet and discharge all the complicated requirements 
of life. How many of us do all that we can with our 
abilities, push them to their best results, employ them 
harmoniously, honestly, continuously, and so perfect not 
ourselves alone, but help toward the brave and better 
time, always coming in song and hope, always delaying 
in fact ? Can any of us sit down calmly with himself 
at the end of the day, and give a searching to his day's 
employments, and acquit himself of some infidelity 
somewhere, some want of scrupulous exactness in his 
doing, of something undone which not only he could 
have done, but could have done just as well as not, 
and, as the school-boy used to say to me, wellerf You 
will be happier, truer than I am, happier, truer than I 
think you, if you have never a darker curtain shutting 
about your day than that the night draws, if your 
prayers are not broken, ay, and forgotten in the rush 
and rebuke that conscience ministers the moment we 
will let the babble of world and sense hush. I think 
I know to what grand heights severe, exact fidelity 
would lead us all ; how we should be as giants far on 
amid now impending and perhaps appalling difficulties, 



WHAT SHE COULD. 



243 



treading among them as a giant treads, and working 
our way toward the limit-goal of our ability. I think 
I know how grand lives might become, — not lives 
grandly gifted, but ordinary lives, only were men doing 
just what they can, what God sent them to do, what he 
expects. I think I know what the napkin-folded talent 
might have expanded into, and how mighty the using 
one humble, fearlessly exerted ability might become. 
Great gifts have not helped the world so much as little 
ones thoroughly used, and humble lives lie as corner- 
stones beneath the grand benevolences of the world. 
Dig down and lay bare what years have overlaid and 
generations have forgotten, remove dust and rubbish 
and all that time has done, and expose, as men expose 
Pompeii and Nineveh and Jerusalem, the beginning of 
things, and it will amaze you to see what upholds some 
of the honored institutions the world could not do 
without. The Sunday-school system, with all its broad 
inclusiveness, starts from the cobbler's stall ; and poor, 
rude, illiterate Robert Raikes, building better than he 
knew, creates that which follows round the world with 
equal pace the advancing footsteps of the gospel. 
Monasteries, which had their place and did their work 
in the civilizing, if not the Christianizing of other cen- 
turies, before they became infamous, were the labor 
of one man. Wesley, revolting at what he saw in the 
Church, and faithful to the guiding of his one convic- 
tion, — doing what he could, in speech, in word, in peril, 
and in persecution, — again, wiser than he knew, builded 
the great power of Protestantism, which, had it been 
true to his spirit, might have held in its broad embrace 
all Protestant power, so elastic was his system as it got 



244 



WHAT SHE COULD. 



shape from him. Four million freedmen to-day, ay, 
and the millions more of whites who were never free 
from thrall till the day the shackles fell from the limbs 
of the slave, owe it to the one man who could not be 
stopped by mob, by dungeon, or by law, who fearlessly 
did what he could, and has lived to see a work done 
more gigantic and more hopeless than all which have 
made the fabled name of Hercules the marvel of the 
past. Doing what she could, a sewing-girl established 
a hospital for " incurables," a charity so needed, not in 
Boston only, but everywhere ; and a single woman, born 
to and cradled in every luxury, doing what she can, 
resides at and manages and gives her time, her purse, 
her heart, to it, finding a mission where few would 
look for it, and such as surprises every one who knew 
her. Doing what she could, Florence Nightingale, 
and then the whole crowd of our own women, tender 
and true, threw down luxury, forgot the immunities of 
class and sex ; on battle-fields, into hospitals, bringing a 
woman's hand and a woman's heart, opening the por- 
tals of Paradise before many a glaring eye, telling it to 
the world and leaving it written forever that tumults 
nor alarms, dangers nor deaths, can keep a steadfast 
soul away from duties ; and, if you ask for the reward, 
I cannot show you the account God keeps, but I can 
show you graves, and in homes the suffering wrecks 
which long-wearing service, the strain on body and 
heart, has made. 

Doing what she could in yon alleys and streets when 
we first tried to do something for the colored people, 
a sweet New England spirit of culture and grace fal- 
tered and fell ; and we just laid her under the old trees 



WHAT SHE COULD. 



245 



of her old home, that they might bless her before she 
passed away. And the colored people of this city* 
built her monument. 

And so one might go on, culling from history, cull- 
ing from experience, the brave ones who have not sat 
down and sighed, finding "nothing to do," time weary, 
life dull, but have evoked the spirit within them, and 
with instant and reverent duty taken that which lay 
near, — the thing they could do, — and have made ordi- 
nary lives rich in experiences and blessings. You, no 
doubt, know in homes the same things, facts never 
known outside of homes, lives lived only for home, yet 
lived out in fullest fealty to the idea of the words we 
consider. You no doubt know, walking these streets 
to-day, self-denials and activities that will outshine the 
pampered selfishness that passes them unheeding, as 
the star outshines the miner's candle or the glow- 
worm's light, and will glitter all over with immortality 
when rottenness hath seized on gold. And yet, with 
all that, I fear much that we are like the men in the 
market, standing all the day idle, not working out our 
salvation through the gift given us, — doing what we 
can, — not adorning, strengthening, ennobling the hu- 
manity in which we are partners, but pushing away the 
thought of obligation, and making of life only our own 
pleasure and profit and ease. 

Friends, we want to carry into our lives a realizing 
sense of what this doing what we can amounts to. It 
is the thing we shall be gauged by, it is the thing by 
which we should gauge ourselves. It is just what more 
than one parable teaches, more than one word of Jesus 

* Boston. 



246 



WHAT SHE COULD. 



teaches. It is immanent, imperative necessity. It 
is not what we cannot do, — the impossible things men 
dream of in their reveries, the shadows they chase in 
their indolence, or the great things they waste life 
waiting for, — but only and simply the things we can 
do, that which takes just the time we have got, just the 
power we have got, just the place we have got, just the 
opportunity we have got, is the demand upon the place, 
the hour, the talent we have. We should never have 
had the sweet perfume of Mary's alabaster box perme- 
ating the ages with its holy aroma, had she neglected 
the power she had, the thing she could do, and done 
nothing because that was no great thing to do, be- 
cause she had only an alabaster bottle of ointment, 
and " what was that ? " 

It is the appropriate tiling, the thing that just fills the 
niche, the keeping time up to its demands, the deeds 
up to ability, that make ample doing and secure great 
reward, — not the seldom things men call great, but the 
multitudinous things which are just as great to God, 
whose value lies in their being just what God asks, 
which, done, shall sparkle as gems forever in the coro- 
net God sets on the brow of them he accepts as his. 

By his evening fire, the artist 
Pondered o'er his secret shame : 

Baffled, weary, and disheartened, 
Still he mused, and dreamed of fame. 

'Twas an image of the virgin 
That had tasked his utmost skill; 

But, alas ! his fair ideal 
Vanished and escaped him still. 



WHAT SHE COULD. 



From a distant eastern island 
Had the precious word been brought : 

Day and night, the anxious master 
At his toil, untiring, wrought 

Till, discouraged and desponding, 
Sat he now in shadows deep, 

And the day's humiliation 
Found oblivion in sleep. 

Then a voice cried, " Rise, O Master I 
From the burning brand of oak 

Shape the thought that stirs within thee 
And the startled artist woke, — 

Woke, and from the smoking embers 
Seized and quenched the glowing wood ; 

And therefrom he carved an image, 
And he saw that it was good. 

O thou, sculptor, painter, poet ! 
Take this lesson to thy heart : 

That is best which liest nearest, 
Shape from that thy work of art. 



XXI. 



TIBNI AND OMRI. 

" So Tibni died, and Omri reigned." — I. Kings xvi., 22. 

After the revolt of the ten tribes and the estab- 
lishment of the kingdom of Israel under Jeroboam, the 
history of both monarchies is for a long period a series 
of internal as well as external difficulties, until, carried 
into captivity by the Assyrians, the ten tribes of Israel 
mysteriously and wholly disappear. They seem never 
to have flourished after their separation ; and their 
departure from the laws of and allegiance to Jehovah 
was more than that of the two tribes, the kingdom 
of Judah suffering mainly from the character of its 
kings, while in the kingdom of Israel the very institu- 
tions themselves had become so vitiated that a good 
king could do nothing toward bringing the people 
again to their allegiance. It was about fifty years 
after the arbitrary and insulting words of Rehoboam 
had sundered forever the splendid inheritance of his 
father, and in consequence of the assassination by 
Zimri of the King Elah, that Omri, who was engaged 
as commander of the army against the Philistines, was 
by the army made king, while at the same time the 
people at home had elected Tibni. The kingdom, rent 
by the contentions of these opposing factions, was 
plunged into a civil war, and at the end of six years 



T1BNI AND OMRI. 



249 



Omri prevailed, and Tibni was put to death. Accord- 
ing to the Scripture, Omri did evil in the sight of the 
Lord above all that had gone before him, and that 
must have been bad enough. 

All that was gained to the people of Israel, under 
these circumstances, was a change of masters. They 
were not benefited in any way. Perhaps the last mas- 
ter was the worse. 

Our lives long, we are changing masters, passing 
from service to service, if not from bondage to bond- 
age. In infancy, we come under the very lowest ani- 
mal wants. The immediate, unreasoning demand of 
the senses is then imperative. Hunger, momentary 
pain, sleep, the instinctive craving of our little bodies, 
are the ruling powers, whatever there is prophetic of 
the future man being but the now-and-then utterance 
of a better spirit which must bide its time, and for 
the present serve. As childhood advances, we come 
under the dominion of imaginations, of strange plans, 
vague, boundless, impossible hopes. We question, 
examine, have theories, try experiments. Now we are 
under the rule of this idea, now of that, ever busy, 
ever satisfied, ever changing. 

We pass rapidly from one stage to another, imper- 
ceptibly, as the field of wheat does toward its ripeness. 
Life begins to take definite shape, opinions are imbibed 
which the strong man cannot shake off, habits are 
formed which tyrannize over us till the grave is closed. 
In what we more distinctively call youth, we are set- 
tling down into the service of some one thing, — one 
thing at a time ; and we come to be distinguished, to 
be spoken of, to be ranked by that leading trait or 



250 



TIBNI AND OMRI. 



habit or ability which is felt to be characteristic, until 
manhood finds us established, confirmed, in moral, 
mental, physical habitudes, some one of which assumes 
the mastery, and stamps us, so as all men recognize, 
as its own. You do not know the man or woman whose 
place in life, whose functions, whose reliability, are not 
all based upon, gauged by, that. When you speak of 
another, it is as specially noted for some one thing. 
Other things are mentioned, while there is some one 
prevailing virtue or vice, strength or weakness, policy 
or self-interest, which enters into, shapes, controls his 
thought and deed, his -rising and his rest. 

Under all modification of time and circumstance, you 
see that men are, in certain points or traits, essentially 
the same. They remain all life through under the 
same service, their latest life bearing the same impress 
with their earliest. The mastery is first of appetite : 
that ripens into passion, that into habit, until habit, not 
a mere mastery, but a tyranny, drags its victim chained 
and helpless. You say of some men that they are just 
what they were when they were boys ; and you can 
prophesy pretty surely of some boys what they will be 
when they are men. There is a fixedness that seems 
almost inexorable about some traits. They stick like 
that strange garment which caused the death of Her- 
cules. So deep the poison they infuse into the moral 
system that it never recovers. While all other things 
within and about a man are changed, these maintain 
the same pitiless attitude of mastery, before whose 
despotic will the man crouches, abject as a slave. As 
an instance, I have noticed in life that a mean boy 
makes a mean man. It seems, usually, impossible that 



TIBNI AND OMRI. 



251 



it should be otherwise. I have known great radical 
changes in other respects ; while this, as the spot of 
the leopard, remained unchanged, the determined un- 
der-current in all life, cropping out perpetually, and 
marring a character that had otherwise grown to much 
vigor and worth. The same thing may be said of one 
or two other moral qualities. They rule us to the end. 
This is the half of the truth : the other half is this. 
With all this fixedness in special, separate traits, there 
is a constant change in the laws which govern, the 
motives which influence, the purposes which shape life. 
We are constantly passing out of the control of one, 
under the control of another. Sometimes, this takes 
place without our noticing it. We rouse to find that, 
while our attention flagged or we were absorbed in 
something else, we have come under wholly new laws 
and conditions, are our old selves not at all. Some- 
times, it is by deliberate effort : we make a change, 
because we see that we must, that life is not going 
right as it is. We see that we are wrong, mistaken- 
Life's experience and discipline bring continued dis- 
satisfaction and disappointment, and we must change 
its course, or life will be a failure. But we have not 
courage to search far or to strike deep, to make the 
change radical. Self-dissatisfied amid our self-satisfac- 
tion, we will not sink the shaft of our search deep 
enough. We only feel the tyranny of our old master, 
and think that any change must be good. So we seize 
the thing that promises immediate relief, — as men will 
satisfy themselves sometimes with the immediate sooth- 
ing of simples and salves, when a truer search, would 
show that only the probe and the knife can avail. Our 



252 



TIBNI AND OMRI. 



growing years are years of great inward changes, — of 
real struggles, of deep dissatisfactions, of earnest reach- 
ing forward. Like the distracted kingdoms of Europe 
and of South America, so many times in history, we 
•are throwing off the old and coming under new mas- 
teries, while the real disease under which we suffer is 
not touched : neither life nor liberty is secured. We 
break the bondage of the old only to become bonds- 
men to the new. We strike for freedom : it is not 
freedom, only change, we get. Tibni indeed dies, but 
then Omri reigns. 

Plutarch, closing his sketch of Caius Marius, writes, 
"On the seventeenth day of his seventh consulship, 
he died, to the great joy and content of Rome, which 
was thereby in good hopes to be delivered from the 
calamity of a cruel tyranny ; but in a small time they 
found they had only changed their old, worn-out mas- 
ter for another, young and vigorous, so much cruelty 
and savageness did his son Marius show." You will 
find very much the same thing said by the historian 
of the earlier convulsions among the half-barbarous 
hordes out of whose contentions at last the stable 
empire of England grew. And just that same human 
experience runs down through the ages, enters into our 
own personal history : we throw off an old, worn-out 
master only to saddle ourselves with another, young 
and vigorous. And so it is all the way through with 
man. The invalid turns from physician to physician, 
from allopathy to homoeopathy, from regular to irregu- 
lar practitioner. All the while, the secret of his disease 
is not touched. He has but changed his master. The 
disquieted in. religion runs from preacher to preacher, 



TIBNI AND OMRI. 



253 



from sect to sect, from excitement to excitement ; but 
the disquiet spirit in him is not soothed. He has but 
changed his master. The young man turns from place 
to place, from calling to calling ; but he does not have 
success. He has only changed his master. Deep 
down, where they do not suspect, lies the secret, potent 
cause of all the trouble ; and all these superficial appli- 
cations will avail nothing. You may amuse, occupy, 
deceive yourselves with these changes, and, as each 
fails, flatter yourself that the sovereign efficacy lies 
with the next ; but you are only chasing shadows, 
balking hope, insuring disaster. Often it is with us 
morally as with the consumptive patient. We do not 
detect the deep-seated, fatal malady. We only need a 
little this or a little that, a slight change in condi- 
tion, this tonic, that opiate ; while all the time the 
disease insidiously works at the foundations of life, and 
the vigor of the system is gone before the true danger 
is felt. Morally, we have this advantage : we can find 
and remove the cause of all, and come again to health, 
if we will. 

It is this fact — that so much of our moral effort 
results only in a change of masters — which causes me 
to tremble for him who is undertaking to release him. 
self from a bad way. The difficulty is that the man 
does not understand the entireness of the change re- 
quired, has no just idea of the thing he must change 
to. The crisis of a moral change is a critical one, — 
critical in ways that one does not often realize. It may 
result to advantage : it may result in harm. It may 
deliver ; but it may only substitute a living Omri for a 
dead Tibni. I am clearly of the opinion that, when one 



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is breaking away from one evil habit, he is more likely 
to embrace, to throw the old affection into some new 
evil form, than he is honestly, steadily, persistently to 
turn his back on all evil, and embrace only good. It is 
the special thing, the form, from which we think it nec- 
essary to be weaned, that definite thrall we are to 
break, the relative, partial freedom at which we aim, 
and not that absolute liberty which shall lift us above 
all low and contaminating masteries. We break up the 
habit, not the inward desire which feeds the habit : we 
cut off the stream, but we leave the fount to flow, to 
find new outlet, to push through new channels, and 
flood the life with fresh shames. When the evil spirit 
went out of the man, it was only to find seven others 
worse than it. One thrall was broken, but the craving 
for evil was not checked ; and a sevenfold tyranny in 
the end mastered and destroyed him. And so the dan- 
ger lies with all of us, that we do not so occupy the 
place of the exorcised evil that when it returns upon 
us, as all these exorcised evils will, with coaxing and 
promise and threat, it shall find no room, no compan- 
ionship : it shall not merely find us empty of old sin, 
but garnished with new virtue. 

That which makes the reform of any of the desper- 
ate or abandoned classes, of those who are neither des- 
perate nor abandoned, so doubtful, is not so much the 
intrinsic impossibility of reform — there is no such 
intrinsic impossibility — as that, in reforming them or 
in their reform of themselves, no care is taken that the 
reform shall be radical, a placing under wholesome 
and wholly opposite influences, so preoccupying heart, 
hand, and soul that there shall be no time nor desire 



TIBNI AND OMRI. 



255 



for the old affection. They do not go to the right- 
about, and so fortify themselves that they cannot fall. 
They do not lay the axe at the root, but simply change 
their allegiance, substitute one form of excitement for 
another, lop off here a branch and there a twig, come 
under some other thing they consider less objection- 
able, grow more respectable, with the chances always 
strong against them that their latter state will be 
worse than the first. I know no experiment so hazard- 
ous as that of the man who turns from any sinful 
thing which has degraded him in his own sight or that 
of others, without a deep moral conviction, with only 
the purpose of making himself more respectable. 

Do you know the master that this kind of respecta- 
bility is, — that it is the soulless tyrant, ruling with 
threat and lash the multitude of men and women in 
religion and in life who never pass beyond its bondage 
into the glad liberty of the service of God ? In our 
greater, our lesser sins, this grand mistake vitiates all 
our efforts. It is not absolute liberty we seek, only 
relative. The redemption that is nigh slips from our 
grasp. Reaching toward a promised freedom, we find 
ourselves held to another service, less galling it may 
be, but none the less degrading, while it may be that 
the silken cord of the new shall be even worse for the 
soul than the harsh chain of the old. The hope to 
improve by this sort of change, to be happier, better, 
under the influence of some new conditions, to become 
all that one ought to be by some slight, here-and-there 
improvement, is as fallacious as the hope that comes 
to the hectic cheek and the wasting lungs that under 
sunnier skies and balmier breezes the waste shall be 



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repaired and a new vigor reinstall the man. The 
very change may only accelerate the disease, and 
plunge him into a ruin this had promised to avert. 

I take it that no one will deny that living in the 
world we do, and surrounded by influences such as 
surround us all, it- is impossible for us to remain 
wholly stationary. There must be change. The soul 
never outgrows its pupilage, but is always under mas- 
ters, always in some service. Where one ends, another 
begins. Tibni dies, but Omri reigns. The exchange is 
not always gain, but it ought always to be. Man should 
accept no master but such as he knows will lead him 
in the way of safety. Now, it is an established thing, 
established by experience as well as by the divine 
word, that under one master only is the soul safe; 
and the strife with every one should be to put himself 
under that one. "One is your master, even Christ," 
were the pungent words of Jesus, when he rebuked the 
tendency of his day to put itself under the various 
teachers of the law. And yet how strangely men hes- 
itate about it! They will enter into every other ser- 
vice, bind themselves to any other master, wear any 
other livery. They will enslave themselves to that 
which is most degrading, to that which they know 
ensures death to soul and body, rather than come under 
obligation to the law of Christ. When men had put 
themselves to all other service and found no rest, then 
Christ came to show what was the dominion under 
which the soul should come. Paul recognized the 
truth, and gloried to enlist himself under the banner 
of the cross, despised and a thing of danger then, but 
giving him a joy and peace he had not dreamed of 



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257 



at Gamaliel's feet or found amid the fascinations of 
Greek philosophy and art. Others, many — well known 
as obscure — have since known and proved that, while 
all other service rewards its followers with bondage, 
this gives a perfect liberty ; yet the generations halt, 
hesitate, half-accept, and then fling away the offer. 
Stifling, vacillating, the soul now pays its homage 
here, now there; released from one thrall, it puts on 
another; cheated here, it rushes to a new delusion there, 
ever restless, ever changing, ever dissatisfied, yet reso- 
lutely refusing the one only thing that can give it 
satisfaction and rest. Do you know why it is so per- 
verse ? I do not. I can only marvel that man, so 
prone to seek his own comfort and good, baffled and 
balked in all other things, should not earlier, out of 
very selfishness, turn to that. Turn to it at some time 
he does, — too late perhaps, and only with the shrill 
shriek of despair, or when mid-life, sated with pleasure, 
or age, powerless to enjoy, accepts it, "less because 
it is heartily believed in and trusted than because a 
distrust has risen of everything else." The service 
of Christ then becomes more "a memorial of pardon 
addressed to an enemy than the guest of shelter with 
an eternal friend," giving but a too pungent sanction 
to the sneer of, the atheist, — that " religion is not the 
hearty love of a fresh heart, but the resort of the jaded, 
the enervated, and the unhappy." 

To avoid a disgrace like this, the taint of which must 
inhere in the soul, let any one so soon as he comes to 
the knowledge of good and evil, let any one who is 
breaking away from evil, put himself at once solely 
under the mastery of Christ. The varied vassalage 



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under which most lives waste may shift the burden of 
unrest. They cannot remove it. The children of 
Israel were no better off when Tibni died, for Omri 
reigned. It was but a change in the scourge. Under 
each, they were alike slaves. They had no hope. And 
we, so long as we merely go from the service of one 
pleasure, one habit, one form of excitement to another, 
from one degrading thing to another a little less, so 
long as we put ourselves under anything less than the 
will of God and the way of Christ, shall only change 
our yoke. We shall wear the collar still. Our new 
master may seem a little better than the old. We may 
be a little less at variance with God under his law. 
The chances are all the other way ; while, so sure as 
there is truth, he who rejects all service but that of 
Jesus, seeks and puts himself resolutely under that, 
shall pass into that life of freedom which is the true 
life of the soul, and establishes that oneness with God 
for which the Saviour prayed, toward which all life 
should lead. 



XXII. 



SILENT BUILDING. 

"And the house which King Solomon built for the Lord was built of 
stone, made ready before it was brought thither : so that there was 
neither hammer, nor axe, nor any tool of iron, heard in the house while 
it was in building. So was he seven years in building it." — I. Kings 
vi., 2, 7, 38. 

The idea of building a house for God seems to have 
come first to the mind of David, when, resting from his 
wars, he had brought the ark rescued from the hands 
of the Philistines to its proper abode on Mt. Zion. 
There, David had built for himself a house of cedars, 
adorned with regal magnificence. The nearness of 
the ark and its frail covering, the tabernacle, its sim- 
plicity and want of splendor compared with his own 
abode, seem to have forcibly struck him. "What! 
shall I, David, owing all that I am to the signal mer- 
cies and blessings of Jehovah, dwell in this costly 
house, while the ark of God dwelleth within curtains ?" 
But God bade him desist. It was not for him to have 
this high privilege of erecting the first temple to the 
Most High. It was reserved for other more peaceful 
times, for another, a wiser and a purer man. Deprived 
by his wars and his sins of executing his purpose, 
David employs the remainder of his reign in making 
preparations for it, and solemnly enjoins it on his son 



260 



SILENT BUILDING. 



and successor to go on and effect his cherished pur- 
pose. 

We can form no just conception from the descrip- 
tion of the character and appearance of a building 
of materials and a method of architecture so wholly 
unlike anything we have been accustomed to witness. 
Splendid as it was for those barbaric days, it would 
probably strike one accustomed to the later and more 
exact styles as wanting in both dignity and grace. We 
cannot fitly arrange all that mass of material collected 
by David, increased by Solomon, elaborated by the 
cunning hand of Hiram of Tyre, or comprehend the 
glories of precious metals and stones in connection 
with it. One fact in the enumeration arrests the eye 
and the thought. It is that narrated in the words of 
the text. Here was a vast building erected, materials 
of brass, of stone, and of wood used, seven years was. 
it in building, and an almost innumerable company of 
workmen about it, and yet never was there the sound 
of a hammer or an axe or any iron tool heard upon it; 
but its solid foundation was laid, and it grew into pro- 
portion and glory, stone above stone, rafter beside 
rafter, in solemn silence, as in the forest primeval the 
mighty tree grows, roots itself, spreads and puts on 
majesty and shape and power in a great and solemn 
silence. Imagine it, all the work done afar, and 
brought there, and heaved into place, while the move- 
ments and the mien of every man indicate the sacred- 
ness of the task, that busy crowd coming and going 
in their labor, with the reverential awe that would 
naturally characterize those possessed with the idea 
that they built a house for God, in a very different 



SILENT BUILDING. 



26l 



sense from that in which we to-day use that phrase. 
And this continued not for a brief season, but for 
seven years. 

That temple has passed away, and the glory and 
the grace and the fashion thereof have perished. The 
ploughshare of the foeman has passed over its founda- 
tion, and the mosque of the heathen stands in its place. 
It was the shrine and the pride and the hope of God's 
chosen people, and yet again, many think, shall on 
that spot rise in fairer proportions another temple, 
when this earth shall be the Lord's, and he shall bring 
again Zion. Meanwhile, another temple is building 
in the heart and life that are loyal to God, and that, 
like the first temple upon Zion, rises slowly, solemnly, 
silently. 

" My God ! slow, silent, solemn to thee ! " 

It is not necessary to prove that every man does, 
and must of necessity, build his own character. I 
take it to be a recognized thing that a man is only that 
which he makes himself : that whatever he is made by 
such external pressure and coercion as he can by no 
human exertion and fidelity resist is no part of him- 
self, nothing for which he can be considered account- 
able. 

Character not hereditary. We have that to make, 
each man for himself. We may inherit talent, beauty, 
fortune, but character cannot be transmitted. It fol- 
lows no line of descent ; it obeys no law of entail ; it 
inheres neither in blood nor estate. It is one's own 
individual achievement, to be begun and builded up 
from foundation corner to turret cap, from simplest 
rudiment to the full and grand proportion of a divine 



262 



SILENT BUILDING. 



completeness. Fathers and mothers and teachers, edu- 
cation and circumstance and nature, — these are like 
David and Hiram of Tyre, and the cunning workers in 
brass, and the hewers of stone, and the cedars upon 
Lebanon. They hew and prepare and bring and lay 
in order the material ; but the soul of man is as the 
favored Solomon whom God had appointed to build his 
house, who took these materials others had carefully 
prepared and added to them, and himself built the 
temple according to the planning of a divine architect. 
More favored than Solomon, it is our task, after a 
divine plan, to raise a holier fabric, one which shall 
know neither deterioration nor decay. 

In building, every one knows the necessity of a 
foundation : that it should be deeply laid, and substan- 
tial in its material. The Christian has his foundation 
in faith in Christ. Many suppose this is all. If they 
get what they consider saving faith, they rest. But, 
at most and best, this is only the underpinning to char- 
acter. To stop there would be as senseless as it would 
be for an architect to stop when he had finished his 
cellar. Character — man's great work, that which is to 
distinguish him here and hereafter, now and forever — 
begins with the superstructure which a man places on 
that foundation. Having that, his great work is, in 
the language of an apostle, to take heed how he builds 
thereupon. 

Next to the foundation, we know that a prerequisite 
to a firm, enduring fabric is exact and scrupulous 
attention to every minute part, however trifling and 
unimportant it may seem. There can be nothing com- 
plete, nothing sure, else. Men, in building houses, 



SILENT BUILDING. 



263 



often sacrifice substantial qualities to show ; and, that 
they may attract men's eyes, much that is essential to 
thoroughness and security is sacrificed, — the gay, elab- 
orate front promising a perfect edifice, and within 
showing slighting and slovenliness. The want of a 
proper admixture of sand and lime — the very humblest 
elements entering into the construction, which the 
builder seemed to think he might disregard with impu- 
nity — has in the end proved the cause of disastrous 
fall and ruin ; and the solidity of the foundation, the 
beauty of the front facade, and all the elaborate chisel- 
ling of cornice and architrave and the cunning plan- 
ning of the architect cannot save it. It wanted that 
which every joint should supply. The essential thing 
was that little line of white lying between brick and 
brick, the only thing that could be relied on to give 
strength and security to the whole. Its necessity was 
overlooked, and ruin followed. Just so it is in charac- 
ter. * Men think, if they make a good outside show, 
establish a reputation for a few undeniable virtues, do 
a few real deeds, their characters are made, and they 
may fold their arms securely over the rest ; and where 
man's eyes do not come, in the quarry of thought and 
opinion and motive and feeling, in the little daily 
detail of care and business and life, in the admixture 
of these slightest elements out of which character 
grows, they are heedless and indifferent, and leave 
them to be decided by circumstance or by chance. 
Most fatal is this. Life can have no coherence so. 
Its parts, its separate virtues, cannot be relied upon. 
Great, important, perhaps they are; but, like disjointed 
stones and rafters, worthless for want of that which 



264 



SILENT BUILDING. 



shall bind all together, and cause all to grow into one 
substantial structure. 

A few isolated virtues or deeds in life, called out by 
circumstance or chance, do not make character ; but 
character grows by the slow, imperceptible, silent ac- 
cretion and inter-dependence of every day's humble 
efforts. Out of combined little, perhaps unseen, things, 
its vastness and its value come, as those huge rocks 
on which ships sometimes founder. It is these which 
give integrity, which supply a hope, which make it 
reasonable for a man to trust himself, which give secu- 
rity ; and, in the beauty of compactness and complete- 
ness, is a far higher beauty than that of any meretri- 
cious ornament which glitters, but deceives. On this 
foundation, by the careful building in of the most 
trifling things, in work and deed, the character, — the 
kingdom within, — without observation, grows, slowly, 
little by little. 

Slowly, silently, did Solomon's temple rise into the 
proportion and dignity of a house for God. Slowly, 
silently, these characters of ours emerge from weak- 
ness and chaos, from vanities and triflings and fears : 
slowly, silently, through each day's invisible progress, 
rise we into the proportion and grace of the Christian 
life. Weary the task, no doubt, and discouraging, as 
sun after sun sets, the allotted time grows less, while 
we detect no advance, do not see that another course 
has been laid. Yet the vine grows through the sum- 
mer hours, though no man ever detected it ; and the 
soul, under the full sun of a serene purpose, must 
unfold, never so slowly, mayhap, never so silently, yet 
ever so sure. It is the work of the present to toil, 



SILENT BUILDING. 



265 



have patience to wait. We gain if we do these, 
always be sure of that ; and remember the other life 
only sees the perfectness of the house we have builded. 
We are never quite wise, and have to be taught again 
and again the old lessons. 

Away back in the elder time, God had to teach the 
prophet that himself was not in the storm or in the 
earthquake ; and Christ said it — how vainly - that his 
kingdom would not come with observation. We are 
always seeking signs, — as they of old, — and again and 
again have to learn that the living presence of the 
divine spirit within us comes not with sweep of storm 
and outpouring and demonstration, resistless as fate, 
but gently as the spring life comes, which is to ripen 
everything into the luxury and harvest of autumn. 
We have to learn it, and we don't learn it after all. 

The greater demand of the Christian Church yet is 
for that access of a life in the soul which shall be mani- 
fest to sense, — immediate, abrupt, scenic, storm and 
tear, and physical distress, and shout or groan. Not 
as the holy dove dropped silently out of the clear sky 
upon the newly baptized Jesus, do men look now for 
the coming of the spirit of God, but by outward demon- 
stration. I think God never reverses his laws. Once 
the way, always the way. In a great silence he comes 
to man, in great silence works with and within him. 
True life is still life, is secret life. That can't be the 
" Lo ! here," or u Lo ! there," of the street or of the 
house-top. It is silent growths into life that our re- 
ligion demands, not spasmodic grasps at emotion. It 
is character which, in its highest reach, is the life of 
God in the soul of man, that we need to be at. 



266 



SILENT BUILDING. 



In the spring days, you are only conscious of the 
exquisite life that is all about you. You do not see 
how the petals of the rose unfold, how the violet grows, 
or by what subtile process it distils and scatters its 
perfume. Day bathes it in light, night wraps it about 
with shades, dews come to it, and breezes blow, and 
the life circulates through and through plant, flower, 
and tree ; but silent and unseen it all goes on. You 
see only result. You hear no voice. So with the 
approach of God to the soul, so when he possesses 
us, — no outward manifestation, no rending, as when 
evil spirits go out, no toss and tumult and conten- 
tion, — the exaggerations of men's device and substitu- 
tion, — but God comes down and takes possession 
silently and makes peace in us. Silence goes hand in 
hand with all that is solemn and grand, abiding and 
beneficent. You cannot imagine a world brought out 
of its chaos with noise and commotion, but all things 
subsiding into their places beneath the potent charm 
of that moving spirit. There may have been noise and 
contention before, the rude crashing and jarring of 
conflicting elements ; but before that presence all these 
fled, and order and beauty grew in silence out of 
disorder and confusion. All that is truly beneficent 
is still, moves without noise. The wrath of the thun- 
der and the storm may sometimes go before, but the 
real blessing lies in the quiet sunshine that looks out 
upon cloud and flower after the storm has passed. 
And so, when the empire of old sin dies in the human 
breast, there may be contention, manifest, fierce ; but 
ever the new life grows up serenely and silently, in a 
holiness of joy and peace the world may not meddle 



SILENT BUILDING. 



267 



with, which cannot be known by or interpreted to 
another. 

Every one must know that his best life is his silent 
life ; his truest growth, his silent growth. What I 
wear outside amounts to little. What I am, what is 
my life, myself, is inside ; and t inside is all the work 
done that fashions me. 

The soul is not made as the statue is, with click of 
hammer and chip of chisel from without ; but the soul 
is made of its own ingrowth, as a peach is. And no 
man shall say: " See there ! It grows!" You shall 
see that it has grown : that is all. Growing, you shall 
not know or measure. The husbandman lies down 
and sleeps. He hears nothing of process, he sees 
nothing ; but in due time he reaps. It is all a solemn 
silence, as is the movement of the stars. We live out 
our more evanescent pleasures, our lesser joys, all the 
mere surface things of every day. We show them, 
we talk about them : they insist on being seen and 
handled and heard. But when it comes to the real 
things, the deep things, the things that make life, that 
are ourselves, how silent we are ! The honest mo- 
ments of the soul are its voiceless moments. They 
have in them what is unutterable by language, what 
refuses to be phrased, what we never put into words 
to ourselves, what the innermost of us understands by 
that understanding which is deeper than all speech, 
and makes known to God in that language, in that 
speech, God comprehends. In the infinite silence, one 
is not merely alone, but in communion with the Infi- 
nite, as the high priest in the holy of holies, — nor 
voice, nor sound, but God, and the silence is the 



268 



SILENT BUILDING. 



dialogue of the two. Unutterable joy or sorrow, how 
it silences ! When we are lifted to the highest rapture, 
when we are bowed by crushing grief, not paean nor 
dirge satisfies, is craved, but silence ; and in silence, 
growth, expansion. God and ourselves, none other. 
No distraction, we alone. Crises in spiritual being, 
how breathless we await their issue, with a silence 
so intense as almost to be audible ! 

New steps in faith or work, — how softly we take 
them, putting the foot down painfully, lest some tru- 
ant echo starting from its slumbers should proclaim 
the fact ! New experiences, new, unexpected, or long- 
awaited results, — how we brood over them, cherishing 
them as a parent bird, with protecting wings and 
a fond gentleness ! Our prayers, our purposes, our 
doubts, our strifes, our days of darkness, our hours of 
light, our conquests, our defeats, the glow of hope, the 
bitterness of fear, — who knows them save Him whose 
eye looks down in secret upon us ? Not the friend 
clasped closest to our bosoms dreams of all the alter- 
nating life which goes on within the seclusion and 
silence of the soul, and is weaving into proportion that 
thing we shall be. Our truest moments, moments of 
realest fealty to principle, be they joyous or sad, we 
cannot share. No word comes up from the deep foun- 
tain to give a just significance to them. The word is 
not coined that could. Only the Infinite, going down 
under speech and understanding everything, compre- 
hends. 

And no one knows the amount and the worth of the 
quiet lives that are grown into, all the time right about 
us, who do their duty, have their trials, bear their bur- 



SILENT BUILDING. 



269 



dens, make their growths, yet give no sign, unless at 
some crisis moment when the ripe result surprises. 
How little do they who only see results — who, per- 
haps, will not even notice them — realize the process 
and the cost of growth, through what silent agonies, 
what resolute bearing we have come up, the price we 
have paid for our power or our peace ! Robertson 
says in one of his letters : " How little we know one 
another's bitternesses ! How little we suspect the 
hours of secret agony and cold struggle that every 
earnest, living heart has to go through in this most 
unintelligible world ! To be where we and those around 
us are living in two different worlds of feeling is tenfold 
more intolerable than to be where a foreign language, 
not one word of which we understand, is spoken all 
clay long." And yet it is by just these things we get 
our best growths, our true grapple, sinew, and power. 
These secret, sacred, silent struggles are they which 
lift us above the low average of man stature, and give 
us proportions that ally us with God. Shall we not 
accept the conditions for the sake of the product ? 
This life — the best of it, the best use and the best 
end — is to ripen toward God ; and, as the fruit could 
not ripen for us were it all sunshine, no more can we 
ripen for him except through some dark, some storm, 
some anxiety, some doubt, some cross. And, if it took 
the thirty years of Nazareth to grow the Christ of the 
Jordan and the wilderness, shall we repine at the 
years that it takes to. grow the Christ-life in us, which 
shall make us at our Jordans and our wildernesses 
such as he ? The familiar hymn has it, — 

" In secret silence of the mind 
My heaven and there my God I find." 



270 



SILENT BUILDING. 



And the other truth — I do not say the more important 
truth — is that it is there that one finds self; and no 
true gain is made in living until the self be found. 

How often in life we detect in others, by some sud- 
den revealing, the extent and the result of this silent 
life! Some circumstance — it is quite apt to be some 
reverse, sickness, misfortune, disappointment — sud- 
denly opens up to you the fact that some one at your 
side, unsuspected of you, has grown into a great moral 
strength. That calm, sustained life is revealed now : 
that inner fabric is beautiful and complete ; and the 
graces you had loved as fitting ornaments to such a 
spirit are found resting upon, and in turn upholding, 
the more solid and substantial portions of character. 

I remember one of those lovely ones everybody 
loves to look at, — child of luxury and fashion, flattered, 
caressed, adored, all bright before her, and much good 
apparently for many years in store, — suddenly was laid 
upon a bed of suffering, and told that she must die. 
There was the greatest interest in her fate, and a cor- 
responding desire to know in what spirit she would 
meet it ; for she had seemed to live for the world, 
absorbed in the gayeties which her position and her 
powers gathered around her. Others said she was too 
beautiful to die ; but, when the truth was told her, in 
sweetest resignation and holiest confidence she heard 
it, and said that never in all that fevered life she had 
led had she forgotten that. She had made God her 
friend, in her sphere had done her duty silently. 
While all eyes gazed upon her, and many envied the 
brilliancy of her career, she was working upon a temple 
of God in her own heart, setting it in order that it 



SILENT BUILDING. 



271 



might become a meet residence for him. It was a 
most striking instance of a not uncommon fact, — one 
which the lifted veil of history sometimes shows us, 
one which we may often meet with in life, teaching us, 
when we are tempted to doubt or condemn because we 
cannot see, that there are deep things in human hearts 
and human experiences, — too deep for the plummet of 
moral fallibility to fathom, — that the deeper the spirit 
life in many bosoms, the less the noise and show. 

Slowly, with a solemn sense of the magnitude of his 
task, man toils at the temple he is to build and dedi- 
cate to God, — the temple of a pure heart and a perfect 
life. There may be noise in removing the rubbish of 
an old carnal being in order that the foundations may 
be laid ; but, as it rises into sight and shape, the sound 
of no hammer or axe or any tool is heard therein. 
As they who labored upon Zion went with bended 
heads and reverent air and silent steps, bearing the 
material and laying it in place, so we reverently and 
silently build up within a temple to the Lord, — a tem- 
ple fitly framed together, goodlier than that of the wise 
king, in which the Lord shall dwell, not as in mystery 
between the cherubim or in the veiled secrecy of the 
holiest place, but as he loves to dwell ever, — in open 
communion with his children. 

Herein^ lies a great truth. We are builders of our 
own characters. We have different positions, spheres, 
capacities, privileges, different work to do in the 
world, different temporal fabrics to raise ; but we are 
all alike in this, — all are architects of fate. 



XXIII. 

JOHN, JESUS, AND PAUL. 

"John the Baptist, preaching in the willderness." — Matt. Hi., i. 
"Jesus Christ, the Son of God." — Mark i., r. 
"Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ." — II. Cor. i., i. 

When I see what is the ordinary paucity of man- 
hood ; how seldom one in a generation or a century 
really outsteps his peers ; how uniform, low, dull, is the 
average, — it is a marvel to me — and a marvel that 
ever grows — that one and the same generation, one 
and the same race, and under very adverse circumstance 
(except that adverse circumstance is the real cause, and 
of the best), should have produced three such men as 
the Baptist, Jesus, and Paul. There is a great deal 
perplexing about our gospel history, almost it perplexes 
more than it clears ; but in nothing am I more perplexed 
than this, that the gospel should have had, at its early 
starting, three such advocates, — more, that it should 
have needed them. I may get some idea of the neces- 
sity of a forerunner, but it is a puzzle that grows to 
more and more why there was any need of an after- 
runner. I can see what he did, what Christianity 
would soon have become but for him, as well as what 
it has become through him ; but why there should have 
been that work to do, why a man who had never seen 
or known Jesus should be the man to do it, is ever a 
perplexity, and ever will be. 



JOHN, JESUS, AND PAUL. 



273. 



Let us see something of these three men, minds, 
potential influences, — these very variant men with so 
variant work and method, — and let us see if we can 
arrange to ourselves the separate and well-divided parts 
which they had in the great drama. 

But let me first say that John and Paul were great 
men. I see no signs of greatness anywhere among the 
original twelve, not one of them men of mark ; very 
ordinary men, even the three best known ; men well 
enough for every day, but evidently no way great men, 
not crisis men, not men on whom affairs turn, not men 
to lead ages or guide opinion ; men not of the calibre 
needed when times are changing, thought moulding, 
action prospering ; not one of them a man of power 
in brain or character, — Peter, bold enough, but not 
reliable, hot-headed, unbalanced, bigoted, and seeing 
only narrowly ; John, timid, effeminate, a man to lean 
on Jesus' bosom, not to lead in Jesus' work ; James 
and the rest hardly more than names to us to-day. 

But John the Baptist and Paul are really men. 
They are the true workers and the true heroes : they 
have power and character, — men to have made their 
mark anywhere, at any time, in any genuine work ; 
men to admire and respect, fitting well into the niche 
they occupy, and leaving behind a personality which 
the world will always recognize ; the one receding at 
the advent of the greater one whose herald voice alone 
he is, the other pushing himself well forward, taking 
the aggressive, following after the great one, boasting 
of himself in Christ, as zealously as the other timidly 
declared himself unworthy to unloose his shoe-latchet ; 
the one filled with a sturdy, unenthusiastic, prosaic pur- 



274 



JOHN, JESUS, AND PAUL. 



pose of duty, the other filled with a quickened spirit, 
which led him among unseen things, snatching him 
beyond the prosaic, and inspiring him with a kindling 
enthusiasm to burn all through his own time, and to 
make every reader in every age tingle with its unfail- 
ing influence. 

The Baptist was personally known to Jesus. If they 
had not been brought up together, — as legend and art 
would seem to suggest, — in education they must have 
been similar ; and with the general purport of the 
mission of Jesus John must have been familiar, 
though it is amply evident that the last and greatest 
of the prophets had no real idea of what his mission 
shadowed. He was Jew of the Jews. Not a touch of 
the Christian about him. His the spirit of the proph- 
ets only, — men from whom he legitimately descended, 
in thought and dress and method. He is a man of the 
Decalogue. No breath from the mount of the Beati- 
tudes had touched, refreshed, fructified his spirit. Of 
the old and the past was he, a lingerer in that twilight 
that closes a night and preludes a day, a man of back- 
ward look, who hoped for a renewed Israel, but never 
knew one pulsing hope of the coming kingdom, — last, 
best, greatest of prophets, less than the least of the 
kingdom of God. He closes the long and honored line 
of gifted men who had, through the many centuries of 
misfortune and misrule, made luminous the pages of 
Jewish history, and who, from time to time, like stars 
upon a stormy sky, had shone out clear and strong, 
proclaiming the survival of the better spirit, renewing 
the hope that, at some time, a better day would come. 
The better day was come. John was its herald, but 



JOHN, JESUS, AND PAUL. 



2/5 



the opening was neither to be seen nor to be for- 
warded by him. Like another Moses,. he was to die at 
the threshold, not to pass over and possess. 

It was his unique felicity to have pronounced upon 
him such eulogy as never had fallen from human lips. 
Jesus was not chary of commendation. It was one of 
his graces that he spoke soothing words wherever he 
saw honest purpose. What words approach that heart- 
felt benediction which, if his disciples bore faithfully 
back to his lone prison, must have been sweetest solace 
for many a bitter hour. It is like a "Well done ! " from 
God. It puts the Baptist by himself: it stands him 
high, and separates him from all other men. And what 
ourselves we knew of him confirms the eulogy. He 
called himself a voice, and he was that, — and not only 
that, not a voice out of cities and cultures, but a voice 
out of the wilderness, rousing the people, as the voice 
out of the cloud precedes the storm. He was an old- 
time prophet, apart from men, save as he had a mes- 
sage to bring. But he was more. None of his old- 
time predecessors — the grand men of the gray past — 
to stand by his side. Not the place he held, not the 
work he did, but the man, a marvel. He was no 
part of a machine or of a drama, not merely a sharp, 
warning cry, but, with all his rough exterior and 
strange uncouthness and solitude of spirit, a rarely 
lovable man, who would have repelled by his raiment, 
but won by his heart. The tender consideration that 
he had for Jesus ; the unselfish way in which he thrust 
himself aside ; the calmness of his rebuke to his ex- 
cited disciples ; the modesty with which he declared 
his own decrease; the willingness that Christ should 



276 



JOHN, JESUS, AND PAUL. 



grow, — all these rare qualities are the qualities indi- 
cative of a rare soul. One of them almost enough, 
many would think, but all bound up in one, making a 
rare whole one rarely sees. It requires a large, full 
nature, a sublime unjealousy, great self-control, and 
great fidelity and genuine largeness, to yield one's own 
individual place, work, repute, to fall back, to consent 
that one's self and all one has done shall fade, be 
forgotten, sunk into oblivion, while another takes the 
honors ; to see a thing you have initiated, toiled for, 
risked all for, been defeated in, go on to its success 
through another. To feel warmly toward, welcome, 
approve, rejoice in, and indorse that other unquali- 
fiedly, is a virtue few of us reach up to. Yet this is 
just what that man did, and did, apparently, without 
hesitancy or demur. He had that hard form of trial, 

— to see his disciples leave him and follow another, 

— a thing which philosopher, teacher, preacher, never 
faces but it cuts deep. Yet his great nature met it 
and rose above it. The Christ was the worthier. 
That settled it. No personal ends or hopes should 
stand between. His very shoe-latchet was too sacred 
a thing for him to touch. Without apparently know- 
ing what, he did know that the Christ brought other 
and more truth than he. He was but the dawn, the 
Christ should be the full sun. He was but the voice, 
Christ should be the life. He but prepared the way, 
but the Christ with beautiful steps should show it. 
It is a superb magnanimity in him, unconscious as a 
child. A child he was, bred in deserts, and unused 
to the diplomacies of men, but with all rugged manli- 
ness and generosity, standing out perhaps from his 



JOHN, JESUS, AND PAUL. 



277 



torture-house, his one querulous or doubting inquiry, — 
as who would not who felt that the great movement 
himself had proclaimed halted under the hands of the 
very man ordained to push it to its success ? 

His the least pronounced work of the three, as from 
his position was inevitable, — the closing, the concluding, 
of the most magnificent epoch that any nation has pre- 
sented ; for in true greatness there is in history noth- 
ing anywhere to stand beside the history of the descend- 
ants of Abraham, — not specially great in arms, traffic, 
commerce, art, or man, but great in the fundamental 
and broad principles which underlie the national moral- 
ity, religion, and life. And, as Jesus showed, it was a 
grand culmination in his single person. He stands 
wreathed with the immortal chaplet of approval Jesus 
wove and placed upon his memory. The great pro- 
phetic caste closes and is crowned in him. 

What shall I say of. that other name before all other 
names, man above all other men, whom centuries and 
languages have been talking about and extolling, with- 
out ' beginning really to give us the full glory that 
shines out in his matchless manhood ? Brains have 
been busy conceiving and tongues busy proclaiming 
him; but just what that life was, the crude outlines of 
which meet us in the evangelic page, none have yet 
succeeded in telling. And honest difference vibrates all 
the way between the extremes of opinion, making him 
God on the one hand and a very mistaken man on the 
other. Under either extreme, we have one sure thing, 
—a grand personality, a life, a power, that got itself into 
the world's experience, and changed the current of the 
world's flow. How to get at the pith and marrow of 



2/8 



JOHN, JESUS, AND PAUL. 



that personality ; how to conceive and present it; how- 
to make it, to one's own soul, the vital, inspiring energy ; 
how to weave these few broken incidents into a unique 
and satisfactory whole ; and how to clothe the skeleton 
they present in all the glow of life, — is the great inquiry, 
the great desire, indeed it is the great need. I take it 
that to-day the Christian cause has no more pressing 
need than just this of an adequate conception and 
portrayal of the Christ. Much thought has been turned 
that way ; and men of practised skill, as men of journey- 
work, have tried their hand at it, and we have many 
lives of Jesus attempted. Mostly from the extreme of 
Renan on the one hand to the extreme of the extrem- 
est orthodox literalist on the other, — they strike you 
as not so much attempting to develop a life as attempt- 
ing to bolster a theory. Too much art confronts you, 
and the dear simplicity of truth is wanting. As in the 
ages only at rare intervals does the genius of painter 
or sculptor assert itself, leaving behind it lineaments 
touched as with some other than the ordinarily human 
power, so only is it at intervals that a master mind at- 
tempts the rarer and grander work of bringing the 
deepest thought out to man. And I suppose we have 
got to wait till all things shall consent to the moulding 
of the mind which can grasp in harmonious whole the 
disjointed, in some instances contradictory, in many 
cases the perplexing, fragments of the Messiah's life, 
group and grade and subdue them into proportion and 
place, and then give us such an impersonation as man 
must say, " * Ecce Homo,' — This indeed is he." There 
are approximations to this already, signs of a coming ! 
Many men have done well in greater or lesser part, — • 



JOHN, JESUS, AND PAUL. 



279 



men of the broader school in Germany, England, in this 
country, — who you feel have advanced the whole matter 
beyond the stiff and stark presentation of creed ; and, 
for an effigy called Christ, have substituted a more hu- 
man and living being. Still, we wait ; and that wonder 
of all time no man satisfactorily conceives or delineates. 

It does not need that I repeat the wondrous story, — 
how a young man, low-born, child of a carpenter of 
Nazareth of Galilee, himself of that same craft, came 
in the might of a great spirit and under the benediction 
of the opening heavens, and set himself to make men 
see how, not as men had thought, but in a deeper 
spirit, he was the prophet who was to come. Without 
noise or observation, save such as tender words and 
loving looks and the gracious carriage of his life called 
out, he spent a few, active, harassed months, and de- 
nied by one friend, betrayed by another, deserted by 
all, died a death of ignominious agony; and, when he 
has gone away, you feel that there is a change in life. 
You sum it up, and you feel there is not a thing in it 
history would care to save, not an incident it would 
select to transfer to its pages. And yet at once you 
say, as you close the record, "What a life was that!" 
And, whenever you recur to it, that thought comes first, 
last, always prominent. The fresh reading he gave to 
old truths, the new things he told us of God and duty, 
are there ; but first and always is his life, with its life- 
giving power. And, that he knew the secret of life, all 
we know who have ourselves lived. When we get into 
human experience and strait, and go to man, to philoso- 
phies, they fail ; when we turn to ourselves, we fail ; 
to what nature says of God, it fails ; while the turning 



280 



JOHN, JESUS, AND PAUL. 



to Jesus, ultimately, if we are honestly true, brings to 
us, out of his life, the guiding, the teaching, the sup- 
port we need. The one striking thing about Jesus is 
that, apart from his mere teaching, he never lost his 
sweetness, as philanthropists, men who put themselves 
forward as social and moral and religious leaders, so 
almost invariably do. We find it that the pressure and 
conflict sour and harden, make irascible and unjust, 
vindictive and termagant. On their reformatory side, 
repulsive, how sweet soever in all else. Jesus was alto- 
gether lovely, and the same to the end. He never let 
his own sufferings or non-success, other men's opposi- 
tions or hates, interfere with his single purpose, with 
the sweet tenderness of his spirit. Smite him on the 
cheek, deride him, betray him, take up stones to stone 
him, crucify him, misunderstand, desert, ridicule, scoff 
at him, he never moves from that one temper. Amid 
all, he pursues his even course^ calm as the mid-day sun, 
and conquers as he seems to fail. The light that he 
brought by his word is fully equalled by the sweetness 
he showed in his life, — the one no richer legacy than 
the other, himself the centre of an influence not yet 
felt as it should be, but yet — who can doubt ? — 
mightily to prevail. 

I never know exactly what to say or think of Paul, 
as unique a character as either of the others, the first 
man who had caught the Christ spirit and fire, the real 
baptism of the Holy Ghost, as John had been the last 
man who had lived after the prophets, was himself the 
uttermost of their teachings and hope. As John 
bridges the chasm between the prophet and the 
Christ, so Paul bridges the chasm between the Christ 



JOHN, JESUS, AND PAUL. 



28l 



and the Christian. On the one side Jesus teaches the 
Baptist, on the other the great apostle. He was the 
only one of them who had any culture, — a man of re- 
finement, letters, society, though I have doubts if he is 
to be considered as the finished scholar many would 
have him. Evidently a somewhat scholar, more evi- 
dently is he a man of affairs, who loves power and 
place, to lead, to rule, to force ; quick to conceive, bold 
to perform, tenacious of purpose as of principle, a tor- 
rent or tornado swiftly striking at the point he would 
make, regardless of bearing down all intervening obsta- 
cle ; politic, plausible, ingenious in treating a topic or 
dealing with men, his policy sometimes overriding the 
moral courage which marks his usual conduct ; fearless 
before a foe, a mob, the Jewish hierarchy, or the Roman 
law ; of a matchless, womanly tenderness, a quick, full 
sympathy, and a certain delicate, courtly friendliness, 
never forgetting his salutes at the end of the most hur- 
ried or impassioned epistle, to older or younger, lower 
or higher, any who might have just reason to be remem- 
bered or might be hurt by forgetfulness. I think what 
we call distinctively the Christian graces first began to 
take shape in him, and have left us the figure of a man 
animate with whatever trait we most desire to find or 
rejoice in in the best manhood. It was no easy thing 
for one so full of passion, of so impetuous impulses, to 
calm himself from the ruthless bigot and persecutor to 
the man of so eager and deep affection and self-forget- 
ting service ; to pass from the rooted narrowness of 
the straitest Pharisee to the perfect liberty of a son 
of God ; to see how utterly the spirit of Jesus de- 
manded not merely the obliteration of all Jewish rit- 



282 



JOHN, JESUS, AND PAUL. 



ual, but of mere Jewish morality and putting away of 
the old man after Moses, as well as after sin, and the 
putting on of the new man, which should only and 
utterly be after Christ. Whether you take him as in 
council with the Christian college at Jerusalem, or 
before the culture of Athens, or at the bar of Agrippa, 
or disputing with and parting from Peter, or hurrying 
through long journeys to bring aid to feeble churches, 
or inditing elaborate epistles to wayward churches, ex- 
horting, rebuking, commending, or standing before the 
high priest, or reassuring frightened sailors, or instruct- 
ing Timothy, his loving friend, — in every position, 
under whatever stress or disadvantage, you feel the man 
equal to the occasion, as if he were set aside for just 
the one immediate purpose, — a military commander, a 
courtier, an orator, a bishop of churches, a giver of law, 
a leader of forlorn hope ; brusque, exacting, tender, im- 
perious, submissive ; a man to cower before, to take to 
your heart ; to plan and to carry out ; a man of affairs, 
and a man of so sublime a spirit of devotion and self- 
abnegation as to confess of himself that he really did 
not know whether he was in the flesh or out of it, 
blending the common-sense of every day with the ec- 
static vision of a devotee. So compact and sinewy 
every way, so morally and spiritually gigantic, that of 
yourself you figure him a model of physical perfectness, 
and it is with a shock of incongruity that you are told 
that these traits attach to no Colossus, but are asso- 
ciated with a contemptible, personal presence, waned 
by some distressing and always obtrusive physical lack ; 
shamed by its presence, yet but the more, because of it, 
abounding in all desirable virtue. One sees specks in 



JOHN, JESUS, AND PAUL. 



283 



the sun, and easily you may find motes, flaws in him, 
but, take him for all in all, a man for the world to wait 
long before it shall produce his mate ; the man who 
saved Christianity to the world almost at the cost of 
the Christ, through whose fiery conception and rhetoric 
men have rather been moulded than by the gentler 
words of Jesus ; the man militant, who set in array the 
gospel against the serried ranks of both Judaism and 
heathenism, and, as the old Highland warrior with clay- 
more in hand, hewed a way for the truth, or a Cceur de 
Leon with swinging battle-axe struck to the death 
what hierarch or dynasty opposed him. Crusader, 
knight-errant, troubadour, he entered the lists against 
all comers, bore down all opposers ; and not David, by 
his casement on Zion, sung to the night heavens more 
devoutly than he poured the rich deeps of his heaven- 
touched spirit into his letters, some of whose passages 
are unmatched for tender sublimity of sentiment, and 
lift the man of a keen and remorseless logic into the 
highest realms of delicate, poetic conception and ex- 
pression, and a singer of the soul's sweetest things, — 
faith and trust and love and yearning, — as well as 
David, while his thought, touched to higher issue by 
other faith, leads us where David never essayed, among 
experiences David never knew. You may recall pas- 
sages which should fairly entitle him to the claim of 
the first singer of Christian sweetness, — to our relig- 
ion, what David was to the Jewish faith. 

A marvellous trio surely, to have been men of the 
same country and the same generation, — men so unlike, 
yet combining upon one work, each a lively stone in 
the new edifice which was to rise sublimer and more 



284 



JOHN, JESUS, AND PAUL. 



enduring than Solomon's temple, in whose service of 
sacrifice and faith all nations were to join, and halle- 
lujahs from all discordant tongues to blend in one 
grand, harmonizing choral to God, who not so much 
of all blood made all peoples as purposes that they all 
be of one faith. 

And so we well see how, in God's plans, divine harmo- 
nies work themselves out through seemingly contending 
discords. Three so unlike men, differing in themselves 
and in gift, inaugurate a new mission to the human 
soul. The hair shirt and the locusts and the solitary 
life and the ascetic mood and the shrill cry precede 
Him whose feet, shod with glad tidings, make beautiful 
the way amid sin, sickness, and sorrow, bringing peace 
and quiet and hope ; while he who will not cry aloud 
himself precedes, the spirit militant, the Charles Martel, 
before whose sturdy blows you hear the crash of falling 
gods, while the wail of their devotees is covered and 
quelled by the jubilant shouts of conquest and the 
paeans that lift themselves as the truth in Jesus makes 
its glorious way. Forerunner and successor do their 
faithful work. John prepares, Jesus tells it all with 
holy lips and holy life, Paul follows and applies. John 
breaks up the ground, Jesus casts in the seed, Paul 
covers it in. The blade has sprung, and the nations 
wait and toil for the coming of the full corn in the ear, 
the precursor and prophecy of the harvest. 



March 16, 1879. 



XXIV. 



LIFE'S BROOK-SIDES. 

" The brook in the way." — Psalm ex., 7. 

A brook is a stream of living, running water, born 
among the hills or of unseen springs in meadows. It 
has a life all its own; and in its moods, its wanderings, 
its rise and flow, and end, it epitomizes the life all lead. 
Born tiny and helpless, it pushes itself and grows by 
pushing ; it dances and gurgles and sparkles, is bright 
and glad ; it is surly and clouded and impetuous and 
mischievous ; it is parched and shrunken ; it creeps 
along under rocks, quiet and deep ; it dashes over 
rocks, shallow and noisy ; it sleeps under the shadow 
of trees its own moisture has created ; and it sweeps 
grandly into the broad glare of the sun. It is shy, it 
is bold, it is a joy, it is a fear, a thing of beauty, 
mayhap a thing of terror, in bounds a blessing, out 
of bounds a horror and a curse ; and that is pretty 
much what man is. 

Up among the hills, away off from man, where only 
winds and bird notes and snapping twigs break the 
silence, how one welcomes the voice of a brook, and 
leaves his way to follow its calling ! What a joy it is, 
— the fall from rock to rock, the white glitter as it 
washes down the precipice, the dash and leap, the 
laugh, the prattle ! A wild, untamed thing of beauty 



f 



286 life's brook-sides. 

and of solitude, it fascinates the man of civilization, 
who, somehow, never gets beyond, away from, the ad- 
miration and the craving for pure, simple, untutored 
nature. 

Nor only when a wild thing of solitudes, to be 
sought and enjoyed alone in off hours, but the brook in 
our way, crossing our daily paths. It adds to the pict- 
ure of the landscape : none is perfect without it. It 
groups and feeds trees, and drapes them as no upland 
can ; it twists and winds itself in and out, a sparkling 
ribbon on a verdant field ; it breaks the monotony of 
other beauty by its own, fills in and fills out, com- 
pletes the scene. A meadow with a brook in it and 
a meadow without, what unlike things ! 

More than beautiful, the brook in the way is a thing 
of delightsome memory to those of us whose thought 
runs back to school-boy days, of skipping stones, and 
wading, and tempting fish with pin and worms, — a joy 
old Izaak Walton never knew, — who have, through long 
summer hours, teased some sober, reverend minnow, 
beneath the cool shadow of a rock, in whose head was 
cunning too subtle for our shallow craft, or have 
stooped just as far as we dared, and a good deal farther 
than was safe, over the brink, that the school-girl at 
our side should have the elderberry or flower she ad- 
mired, or, in less amorous venture, the bird's nest our- 
selves coveted ; whose later years, loitering or lying on 
the ground, have gazed in lazy wistfulness at sparkling 
waters whirling away, and ever-repeated eddies, while 
the subdued melody filled not ear only, but the heart 
with that lotus-like oblivion into which no voice nor 
language obtrudes, from whose restfulness one rouses 



life's brook-sides. 



287 



sharply and shakes himself again, before he can quite 
take up the burden and the staff. 

More than a beauty or a memory, the brook in the 
way is a refreshing, not to eye and ear alone, but to 
weary feet and heated brow and swollen hands and 
parching lips of the wayfarer. In the true travel days, 
what a god-send to the lagging horse a wayside brook ! 
And how he stood, and stood, and drew in huge sighs 
of comfort, and drank with all the measured tasting 
of the water that the connoisseur gives his wine, with 
muzzle well plunged, and dilated nostril and twinkling 
eye. and restless ear and quivering frame, the whole 
dumb eloquence of grateful satisfaction, needing some 
coaxing before he could bring himself to feel again the 
bearings and stress of his load and the tedium of the 
hot and dusty way. And, when the summer noon is 
hot and sluggish, nature takes her siesta, the cows 
stand deep in the running water, chewing the cud in 
measured cadence, and with lazy monotony switching 
the tail, so wise, so mute, so comfortable ! Among the 
hills or over beyond the fences, in meadow or woods, 
or by the roadside or across the way, to beast, to men, 
a grateful blessing is the brook. 

And so the brook is a picture, a synonyme, a just 
figure of speech, of restful pleasure, of genial beauty 
and refreshing. It crosses dry and arid highways, 
and they lose their uninteresting tameness. We rest 
beside them, or we take fresh courage for our way, as 
we cross them. 

In the journey of life, our ways are crossed by 
brooks ; that is, to our weary feet and heavy eyes and 
worried heads, in the dull monotony of duty and of 



288 



life's brook-sides. 



being, there come refreshing places, — not nooks and 
dells and loitering places, but places of flowing water, 
crossing our paths, oftentimes in unexpected places. 
We are too apt not to see that these are brooks, alive 
with nourishment for us. We call them something else, 
and get some other teaching from them. It depends 
a good deal upon the names we give things, what is the 
manner of effect they produce upon us. And we go 
on in life, giving things wrong names or unwise names, 
receiving wrong or unwise impressions ; and mostly the 
wrong names and impressions are bad, and not good. 
Why should we make all halts in life into glooms, and 
every tryst of the soul a sadness ? Why make the 
things .that strike across our path into checks, barriers, 
thwartings, disappointments, — hardness of fate to our- 
selves or others, — flaws, chasms, gulfs, or, if we be 
sometimes led up to things which are really these, why 
not see how many times it is that which crosses our 
way is a brook, living and limpid with its refreshing ? 

Here is the going of the old year, the coming of 
the new. Why not think of it as a brook crossing 
pleasantly the pathway of our pilgrimage, — not a dark, 
depressing, lugubrious thing, but a thing bright with 
beauty and with joy ? Very much we are made to feel 
as if it were a portentous and unpleasant something 
that yawns before our feet, as we cross the wholly 
artificial barrier which separates two calendar years. 
The people who pray and weep and sob, and call up 
memories, and drape with funereal glooms the depart- 
ing hours in their own secret chambers, or those in 
more public exhibitions of the watch-meeting, even 
those who spend the hours in frolic, and salute the new 



life's brook-sides. 



289 



year, as the new king is saluted before the old is 
well gone, — carry over into the new, deeper down 
than superficial salutation or gift, a secret weariness, 
an ill-defined dissatisfaction, a teasing restlessness, be- 
cause of movements and monitions of the within man, 
rebuking and haunting and discomforting. We are 
rather rasped by pulpit and by monitor and by con- 
science urging us to look at the past, and bring it up 
in sharp contrast with what should have been, — the 
warning as to the future, and imperative with the 
urgency of the now. It is a dark line drawn across our 
way, a deep ditch, a gulf fixed, — on one side one eter- 
nity, on the other side another. There is too much 
demand for the gloom about it, as if here were a halt, — 
the soul must call for introspection and contrition and 
self-weighing and measurement. Whatever we may 
throw into tone and gift, into salutation and occasion, 
it is rather a cheerless time we have of it inside, 
that we think we ought to have. Let it be these self- 
considerations in some wholesome sort, nothing exag- 
gerated, morbid, purely occasional, and then let the 
crossing the meridian be as the crossing a brook 
in one's way, — encouragement, stimulant, refreshing, 
sending us forward on our journey. 

And this season ought to be that. Do you suppose 
God delights in lead colors, — in the bowed„heads, in 
the perturbed spirits, in the long faces, and the dreary 
hearts ? He has no taste for glooms. The only thing 
he has made black he has hidden away from sight, and 
has ordained it should minister light and heat and joy. 
Do you believe that discipline and experience — the 
hard times and the hard lots which we more complain of 



290 



life's brook-sides. 



than have — are the unrelieved things we make them 
by the aid of theology and our own selfishness ? Are 
there not more times of refreshing than of repressing 
in the average human lot, more brooks in the way 
than ditches or gulfs ? It is a thing to be remembered 
that we cross the threshold of another year ; but shall 
I only think of my sins and my shortcomings, count 
up my losses, renew my sorrows, and re-shed my tears ? 
Shall I not also think of my hopes, my great opportu- 
nities, and my advance ? Shall I say in my greeting, 
"I wish you a happy New Year," and yet feel in my 
soul, a good deal uncomfortably, that I ought not to 
make it a happy day to myself, — but a time of mor- 
tification and penance, a river of Babylon and my harp 
upon the willows, rather than a brook in my way, sug- 
gestive of elastic life and hope and a great beyond joy 
of ever-increasing power and broadening expanse, ere 
it shall empty the full volume of its waters in the wait- 
ing sea ? 

We do not take refreshing enough. I do not mean 
mere holiday, but a better rest, a truer strengthening. 
We keep ourselves in the worry and fret of life. We 
see things as blanks, as barriers, not as brooks ; as dis- 
turbances, not as helps ; as hindrances, not as profits. 
We never take off harness. We unyoke the ox, we 
strip and rub down the horse, we let out for his run the 
cosseted dog ; but we do not take off the harness from 
self, strip and rub and give it a run, — no genuine sea- 
sons of refreshing. People used to run through a life 
of every indulgence, and then go and shut themselves 
up in convents or hermitages, and make it all square. 
A people jaded nowadays with the world's wear snatch 



life's brook-sides. 



291 



little occasions for dainty penance and seclusion, and 
try to make the soul's refreshing out of restrictions, 
as if that were the best way to serve God. 

" Shall fasts and penance reconcile 
Thy favor, and obtain thy smile ? " 

the hymn asks ; and the old prophet sternly says : " In- 
cense is an abomination unto me I cannot' away with. 
To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to 
me?" And the other prophet grandly asks, "What 
do,th the Lord thy God require of thee, but to do justly 
and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God ? " 

Morally, existence is with us a penance, a task-work 
of God imposed upon us, worse than an Egyptian or 
American slavery. We do not recognize or will not 
stop at the brooks which cross our way ; or, if we cross 
them, we lap, as the men of Gideon, and rush on, in- 
stead of cooling our limbs and quenching our thirst by 
generous draughts, and getting the inspiration of fresh 
courage for fresh travel. 

All this is wrong, and making life into something 
God did not ordain. It is easy enough to see the earth- 
face all gashed and seamed with ravines and earthquake 
foot-prints and ragged steps of torrents and glaciers, 
torn and rent and distorted by avalanche and whirl- 
wind, barren with desert sand and mountain preci- 
pice ; and so it is easy enough to see human life all 
defaced by scars of misery and ignorance and want and 
suffering and woe, to dwell upon the shadows and mis- 
haps of our own lives. But the earth-face is better ; 
and human life is not what we paint, when we paint 
it in the shadows and paint out the light. There were 
those, the Psalmist said, who, passing through the val- 



life's brook-sides. 



ley of Baca, made it a well ; and Baca was " a stony place 
where there was no water and no herbage and no 
trees." They made the dull, dreary place beautiful 
with life. 

There are those passing through life who make it a 
Baca, a stony place " where there is no water, no trees, 
no herbage "; and again, others passing the same way, 
and under similar circumstances, make it glad in 
springs of renewing water, welling up from all manner 
of hidden places, and pouring themselves out in streams 
• to refresh parched places, and make the very deserts of 
life to blossom. 

And it takes so little to do this, only one has the true 
spirit ! It is amazing, — the little things that give great 
refreshing, the constant need we all stand in of other 
people's kindness, courage, or faith, brightness in word 
and deed, and at how small an outlay from them is a 
great blessing to us, how small outlay from us might 
give great refreshing to them. Whatever we may 
make the pathway of childhood, the broad road of 
maturer life is apt to be dry and dusty, and heavy with 
burden, to lack refreshing watercourses. We all get 
so earnestly into the " struggle for existence," so much 
of one's own success is by the pulling down of another, 
— your gain, somebody's loss, — that the charity of 
Paul, " the enthusiasm for humanity," gets mighty little 
chance with us. 

We are contestants for a prize, and it is not merely 
things, but men, that are in our way, that we must get 
one side. Despite us, the sweetness goes from us ; and 
we get hard and inconsiderate and selfish, — at any rate, 
thoughtless. When I recall the heartiness of a simpler 



life's brook-sides. 



293 



time, as we still find it among the poor, I but feel that 
the advantage of civilization and culture is purchased 
at loss of the finer thing we should be. Culture and 
civilization make us critical ; and to be critical is soon 
to be captious, if not cynic. Everything reduces itself 
to criticism in our day. We are nothing except we 
are critical ; and criticism, to be criticism, must be de- 
structive, if not detractive. We criticise ; that is, pick 
flaws in, find fault with. One suspects his neighbor 
of having no real opinion, unless he takes exception. 
Art and books, sermons, and all manner of work, and 
men, are handled a good deal by a cold or cutting 
measurement, by an arbitrary standard, rather than by 
a generous valuing at their best, putting in best light. 
It is only now and then, in our present and self-ab- 
sorbed lives, that a man feels he has hospitality at the 
hands of his fellows, a fair show. It is the "outs" 
about him that are marked and re-marked. And so 
we journey, chafed and sore and alone, — not, as they 
tell us, men journeyed in the old caravan time, when the 
missing Christ child could be supposed among friends, 
but as solitary pilgrims, each eager for his own goal, 
leaving others to their own mishaps. And yet so 
little a thing might change all that ! It would be so 
easy to turn a brook, with its cheer and refreshing, 
right across the way. There came to me a little rill out 
of a human heart, a thoughtful deed and a tender word, 
when I was parched and weary and desponding, and 
feeling it were better to give it all up, the odds were so 
great, the struggle too hard, the bearing down of hu- 
man opposing and detraction too heavy ; and it trickled 
and bubbled, and sang and laughed, and dropped down 



294 



life's brook-sides. 



into my heart, and percolated through weariness, and 
faint-heartedness, and cheered and braced, reconciled 
and encouraged my wilting manhood. And every man- 
ner of hope sprang by it, with every beauty of blossom ; 
and I, too, sang, and the way was all changed, the day 
made light, the way desirable and even enviable, the 
dust and the heat, the burden and distance, forgotten. 
And nothing seemed impossible, and everything accept- 
able ; and the whole soul went upward, and the whole 
heart outward, — the one God-ward, the other man- 
ward. 

Every one knows that the great encouragements in 
life and the great helps that come to him come just 
that way, — that herein is life's refreshing, its needed, 
its available helps. I know men who have, all through 
life, made the mistake of waiting for other people to 
wait on them. They only disappoint themselves, and 
really do nothing broad and valuable. What we want 
is not the lift, which shall prevent our bearing the load, 
but the cheer which shall help us along, and make us 
feel that our load is not so heavy after all, which shall 
send us back to our burden again, the way of our duty, 
with cheery feelings of that courage which comes 
frorn the least expression of appreciation or good-will. 
It is ^//appreciation which makes the large part of the 
heaviness of life. We more waste under it and grow 
more and more hopeless than under positive opposi- 
tion. To carry an honest self-consciousness — which 
is no conceit — of real integrity and ability and de- 
sert, to find it never acknowledged even negatively, or 
more than vaguely doubted, more depresses than much 
Other that is more pronounced. We need the brooks 



life's brook-sides. 



295 



in the way, the cheering and refreshing. And these 
not the divine beneficence alone can send. They may 
have human source. They flow by no miracle power. 
It is said of Howard and his wife that they had a pas- 
sion for seeing happy human faces, and that after her 
marriage she sold all her jewels that she might the 
more indulge the luxury. A little of that kind of 
luxury would not hurt any of us. To see happy human 
faces, were our hearts right, would be chiefest among 
delights ; the first among efforts, the effort to create 
them. And many people lay themselves out upon it 
a good deal, and we hear about rides for the sick, and 
a day in the country for poor children, and Christmas 
trees, and visiting the squalid, and it is all well ; but 
we are running into a sentimental philosophy, at the 
expense of a nearer charity. It is not North Street 
and Albany Street only that need to be visited, nor 
Provident Institutions, nor diet kitchens, nor soup- 
houses, by which the more pressing human wants are 
met. These things may be as brooks in the way to 
many a truly needing life, and none would grudge 
them to honest worth. But you and I have pressing 
upon us other and nearer duties. 

We do not need to be enrolled on committee or 
made visitors or to cross the street. No man need 
hunt for his mission. His mission comes to him. It 
is not above, it is not below, it is not far. The hard 
and dry and weary way, craving the blessing of the 
brook, is right here in the lives nearest, at our right 
hand and our left, and ministries which only we can 
minister cry out for our doing. We are dazzled or 
dazed by the thing that gets into reports, makes a cry 



296 



life's brook-sides. 



in newspaper, shocks public sentiment, rouses general 
interest; but the great, silent aches and wants, with 
dumb entreaty pleading for sympathy, weary with wait- 
ing, and growing toward strong despair; the neglects 
of ours in daily, home, and homely duties, which write 
in their indelible tale, and leave their haggard furrows 
on the heart, — these, the mission so rarely undertaken, 
constitute our simple, human duty, — not to make happy 
human faces now and then among the children of mis- 
ery, but to keep happy human faces about us all the 
time, to see that across the daily path that must have 
weariness and travail in it some brook shall run its 
bright and cheering course. 

Could we do a better thing for the new year than 
keep it before our minds that we will not so much seek 
pleasure in our own lives as to put pleasant things into 
the lives of others, — the daily lives just around us ? It 
is not a very easy thing to do. It will require great 
watchfulness and self-control, — a habit we are slow to 
form, of living by the golden rule. It is much easier 
to do other things outside, out-doors, which shall attract 
and satisfy other people, and lull any suspicion that 
may come to ourselves of other duties. But, if we are 
really and wisely and wholly to discharge our obliga- 
tions as men and women, that discharge must lie among 
the little and the near things ; and no great fidelity in 
things great and far will atone for infidelity here. To 
be fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, husbands, and 
wives, in all the full meaning of those relations ; to see 
that the watercourses of truest sympathy and love 
cross and refresh the daily path ; to feel that the whole 
way of life, narrow or broad, level or steep, bright or 



life's brook-sides. 



297 



dark, has yet the babble of melody, the shine and the 
song of your helping love and sympathy and cheering 
spirit, — I suspect that is to do the best with life, and 
that the charity or love which so sweetly begins there 
cannot content itself till its circling and well shall touch 
and embrace the woe that wants and waits outside. 

Get the inner and the nearer graces, and the farther 
away and outer follow. The heart strikes outward, and 
carries to every part life. With New Year's saluta- 
tions for each and all, let us make fair start and see 
what we can do, not so much to make it a happy year 
to ourselves as a year happy to others. If we succeed 
in the one, we secure the other. 

Jan. 2, 1876. 



XXV. 



THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN. 

" The things which remain." — Rev. iii., 2. 

[Preached Nov. 17, 1872, at the Arlington Street Church, the Sunday 
following the " Great Fire."] % 

I do not know how it is that men so generally over- 
look the value of remainders. In my days of arithmetic, 
I never quite understood the recklessness with which 
the master would say, "Throw away the remainder," 
and in life the little men everywhere set by remainders 
shows unwise prodigality. Almost it seems as if they 
had a grudge against the thing that is left, wanted to 
forget it, thrust it out of sight, instead of trying to 
discover its value and putting it to use. The taking 
away of a part is virtually many times the taking away 
of the whole, so little count is made of what remains. 
Men are like vexed children, who throw away what 
they have because they cannot have what they want, 
or the large class of beggars who refuse the essential 
thing offered because they cannot have the thing fan- 
cied. They gauge what is in hand not by actual 
merit, but by that artificial standard of desire or whim, 
they measure by. Not what we have our prize, but 
what we have not our complaint. Everybody has 
something of Hainan's spirit. The thing deprived of 
outweighs all favors : the things remaining are without 



THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN. 299 

value. Our habit is to exaggerate that thing which is 
taken, so soon as it is taken, — worse, our habit is to 
exaggerate that thing, or part of a thing, it is possible 
to take. Not only thoughtless people, but some who 
at least give themselves credit for being fairly thought- 
ful, persistently see the side of loss, as persistently 
ignore the side of gain, wail over what is taken, and 
fail to grasp the beatitude in what remains, the more 
heavenly part. It very seldom happens that the re- 
mainder is nothing : it most often is of that better part 
which cannot be taken away. I remember it in the 
old nursery rhyme, 

" Take the worst, and leave the best," 

and not only that lower thing which we call misfortune, 
but that higher thing which we call Providence, often 
acts that way, — takes the worst and leaves the best. 
It is evidently the way. That which remains is intrin- 
sically best, however our more superficial feelings may 
at first measure it. God seems to have willed no be- 
reavement to be absolute. In his economy, the brighter 
and broader revealing lies in the remainder left after 
some going away, even that going away which has 
seemed to take all hope with it. Moses, the hope of 
the Hebrews, slept on Nebo, yet the tribes crossed 
Jordan and possessed the land. Jesus, the hope of the 
disciples, slept in Joseph's tomb, yet his spirit went out 
into all the world. Some we loved or leaned upon 
have gone away : we call them dead, but their dying 
has been life to us, more left than was taken. The 
Lord took, but he gave more. So, all down the long 
line, out of destructions everywhere, not annihilation, 
but vigor and life. The world's progress, man's growth 



300 



THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN. 



through the remainders that everywhere mark the path 
of destruction and decay, — they the working capital of 
new civilization or character. Annihilation is for those 
things only that ought to die. Causes, nations, truths, 
men, are sometimes riven as the bolt rives the oak ; 
but the very mightiness of disaster seems to evoke a 
life the sunshine never developed. It astonishes you 
to know into how small a space life may contract itself. 
Branches, trunk, and all their brave power may be gone, 
but, in the far root, other branch and trunk. A spark 
quick with life, that is enough. Rightly conditioned, 
it will kindle, will glow, will bless : wrongly directed, 
it will devastate, — a terrible or a blissful remainder. 
I think it is told of a brave man on the wrong 
side in our late war that, finding himself terribly 
maimed, he wrote to his betrothed, releasing her from 
her engagement. The answer came back braver than 
his offer, " If there is body enough left to hold your 
soul, I will marry you." The remainder of more worth 
in her sight than everything that had been taken. 
What were body graces gone, when soul graces were 
left ? In them remaining enough. Something of that 
same bravery we may at times need, a bravery to start 
again with seemingly diminished resource, conscious 
that the soul of resource is still ours. Is it not mistake 
of ours not to see where the soul of resource lies, to 
need special revelation of that we should ourselves dis- 
cover ? A man mourns the health gone, — if he only 
had that! But that he has not. His resource is in 
the health that is left. Let him be grateful and use 
that. Another croaks about the years that are past, as 
if his capital of life were in them. Let him go to work, 



THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN. 



301 



and in the years left find capital no by-gone years 
took away. People a little sick, a little discouraged, 
talk about days of usefulness as over, themselves as 
only a burden to others, nobody likes them. Let them 
stop whining and making others uncomfortable and 
themselves unhappy, accept the fact, and go to work to 
make the best out of that which remains. Splendid 
things these remainders may grow to. 

Paul, Augustine, Loyola, — think what the remainders 
of their lives grew to after the hot mistakes of youth 
were passed. The friends, the years, the privileges, 
the hopes, the opportunities of the past, are not the 
only values. Oftentimes these are exaggerated, often- 
times fictitious, as the years and blessings of childhood 
are to memory. The value, the soul of resource, is in 
the friends, years, privileges, hopes, opportunities that 
remain, — things that never fail resolved men. I find 
it everywhere that the lowest ebb precedes and proph- 
esies new flood. Histories and biographies tell us that, 
discoveries and inventions. In school-boy days, I re- 
member we read it as part of a poem on the battle of 
Bunker's Hill. 

" E'en then our fallen fortunes lav 
in light." 

What men say about its being darkest just before 
dawn may or may not be true in the universe of 
nature, but all over the universe of experience we find 
that the darkest hour of betrayal or defeat retains 
somehow the germ of a new and brighter hope ; and 
we mark the human eras by the phoenix spirit that 
springs from ashes. You can crush no vitality. "We 
still live," men say. That is the only thing a man can 



302 



THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN. 



do. Catastrophes, misfortunes, deaths, strip externals 
only. Souls of things, as of men, remain. Nothing 
touches them, smell of smoke or breath of flame. 
Their life is charmed as that of the men in the fur- 
nace. Of all life, the germ is immortal. It holds all 
the future needs, more than any past has seen or fore- 
told. If it remain abundant, life shall come. There 
was, one time, not a single Hebrew man-child as the 
prophet thought, except himself, that had not bowed to 
Baal. Only a tomb was the rally-centre of the Christ's 
beloved. Behold in the sacred writings the victories 
of the things that remained, and in our own time mark 
the rebirth of a world out of the remainder, which 
through Holland fled from Scrooby village, and planted 
on Pilgrim Rock seed whose life device of man could 
not destroy, to which the will of God gives ever-spread- 
ing harvest. The germ-life men thought they had killed 
lived, confounding the wise of the world. God elabo- 
rates his great purposes from the little things they 
forget, out of despised remainders works his sovereign 
will. The thoughts of many of you since you were last 
here have been drawn to, absorbed, in the things that 
are gone. To many, the last week's disaster is a per- 
sonal thing. It has inserted itself between the very 
joints and marrow. Your pressing, present sense is 
loss. Your thought has been not so much of the 
things that remain as of the things that are taken. 
That is natural, and you cannot help it. In the order 
of Providence, the sense of loss must come first, only 
it must not all be that. For it is not all loss to any. 
Greater the things that remain than the things taken : 
nothing of real value gone, everything of real value 



THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN. 



303 



left. Not a few have been quick to call the fire God's 
lesson and wrath to a wicked people. I will not take 
God wholly out of it, because he is everywhere, in all. 
I believe that he who makes the winds his messengers 
also makes the flames his ministers. These flames 
have been his ministers, — not in the way these, his 
swift traducers, would say, but in ways more consonant 
with his majesty and honor, not to speak of his care 
and love. They have been telling some things we 
have been told many times before, and shall have to be 
told many times again, before we shall learn or God 
weary in telling. They are revealing things hidden 
before, or known only here and there to some wise and 
prudent, but scattered broadcast now for everybody's 
picking up. What Boaz ordered his reapers to do, 
God does for his sufferers. Unexpected handfuls of 
mercies we glean from the most stricken fields. Broad 
acres, lately the city's pride and confidence, the chosen 
place of commerce and traffic and industry, are to-day 
something more than a wilderness, — and, for beauty, 
ruin and ashes. Some of you, in the wild havoc of 
that night, parted from the honorable reward of years 
of integrity and toil ; and some who had supposed that 
there was the securest place for the bestowal of earthly 
goods have learned that nothing is secure from man's 
accidents, if from God's providence. I will not sit 
down by your ashes and be mourner with you. I will 
not try word-painting of scenes of destruction, or grope 
with you amid glooms. All is not lost. The best 
remains. All did not go up into the night. The 
stately edifice, the garnered treasures, the implements 
of trade and industry, the results of skill and labor, 



304 



THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN. 



fabrics and material and art, are gone, — a mighty holo- 
caust ; but the solid earth remains, the standing-place 
for new activities, all that courage and faith ever need. 
And more stately will men build, and more rare fabric 
will they store, and greater treasure will they gather, 
and broader industries will they protect and reward, — 
all these coming out of what remains, the foundation 
untouched for the new building again. At its grossest, 
most material point, that which remains is greater than 
that which is taken. The superstructure has passed. 
The flame consumed it, not by fiat of an angered God, 
but by fiat of a broken law. The foundation remains, 
like some men's faith, saved so as by fire. The sub- 
stance stands. As men say that in the seed lies traced 
out all the delicate outline of the future tree, as the 
artist told me that in a jagged piece of marble lay the 
thing of beauty he had told me of, and he had only to 
go to work and find it, so in these obliterated streets 
and choked cellars and fallen walls and faithless safes, 
and water and ashes and mud, and desolate and hope- 
less remainder, lies the great mart of the future, the 
Boston to be. 

Before we get into the more directly personal bear- 
ing of our topic, look at the city, and remember the 
things that remain, and thank God, — old historic build- 
ings which even the iconoclastic spirit of this matter-of- 
fact day idolizes. Bad enough to think of Boston 
without the Hancock House, but imagine a Boston 
without the Old South or Faneuil Hall. They remain, 
and what the flame spared may not hand of man de- 
stroy. Our public buildings remain, — churches and 
schools and libraries and art treasures. The media of 



THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN. 



305 



supply of dail/ food remain, our homes remain. Think 
of what it might have been. No horror like that of 
Chicago has come near us, — none of that awful fear 
for the lives of those we love. To weary and troubled 
men, the sanctuary of home is yet intact ; and, when I 
think of that one thing, I feel that no tongue can voice 
the hallelujahs that surge within our grateful hearts. 

Besides these material things, notice in the commu- 
nity what remains, — despite hasty words and deeds, 
raw and excited plans and measures, good sober sense, 
some possessing themselves, nothing of panic, broad 
views of future public good, honest pride and self-reli- 
ance, active benevolence, self-forgetfulness, and a host 
of virtues that keep shy under the sunlight, but in the 
darkness twinkle and glow, and guide and comfort. 
The aggregate, the average of manhood and of woman- 
hood, is higher. There is a new outgrowth of good-will, 
and people have surprised themselves as well as others 
by their endurances and unselfishness and activity of 
charity and zeal. I don't know. I suppose it is a some- 
thing hard in me, but I have not felt one whit, as 
people say they have, the telegrams and speeches and 
expressions of sympathy and offers of money this side 
and the other. Had not Boston earned all that, grand 
leader in every good work that she has been in all 
these years, sneered at and derided, as so long I have 
been compelled to hear her, yet in the day of her disas- 
ter garnering back to herself the bread she had so 
thrown to the waters? I may be all wrong, but I 
haven't felt a touch of sentiment in it all ; but as I was 
reading of one of our firms, burnt out, caring at once 
for their girls out of employ, and ready to employ other 



306 



THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN. 



girls, those very girls in the mean time meeting and 
resolving not to take the money due them, their sep- 
arate littles amounting to a sum that might assist, 
somehow there came over my eyes that which pre- 
vented my seeing to the end of the period, and for my 
manhood I would not have liked to try reading the 
passage aloud. When a spirit like that remains, God 
help us and forgive us, friends, if we consent to be 
mourners over what has been taken away, rather than 
rejoice at that which remains to bring out the finer 
qualities of the nature men treat too roughly, too 
seldom see the divine side of. With such virtue left, 
with the courage and the cheer and the disposition to 
assist, the new tie of brotherhood disaster has forged 
bringing men together as no years of success could, 
every tiling substantial remains. Mere riches, as all 
divine and human teaching has assured, have taken 
flight ; but flight has revealed what we had allowed to 
be concealed, — the value and the permanence of the 
things really worth possessing. The great possessions 
are not taken, cannot be. They remain, are revealed, 
are glorified. In a few words last Sunday, I said that 
the really great possessions had not been touched. 
Such always defy time and death. The young man 
turned from Jesus, sorrowing when he was told to 
sell what he had and give to the poor; "for he had 
great possessions." Didn't he mistake ? Jesus did 
not ask him to part with his great possessions. 
Suppose he had done as Jesus wanted him to, would 
not his great possessions have remained and been 
added to ? He had kept great commandments from 
his youth. Were not these and their results beyond 



THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN. 307 

the sum of flock and vintage and granary ? And is 
not it true of every man and woman here to-day and 
everywhere, whom this disaster has touched, that the 
smell of its smoke even has not passed on their best 
possession, that the best they have, the best they are, 
is the better for it ? 

We are always speaking of the value of character to 
ourselves and to others, but only at crises like this do 
we realize the priceless thing it is. Suppose it possible 
that some convulsion, some wave of disaster, could 
have swallowed the character of this city, of the men 
and women of it, and this day's sun had looked down 
upon Franklin and Pearl and Summer and Milk Streets 
standing in all the glory we loved so well, while the 
people stood a moral ruin, blackened and disgraced 
before the world : you might call that a disaster. 
Nothing could repair it. Granite column and bank- 
vault, raw material, cunning fabric, never could have 
replaced that loss. There had been no remainder to 
work with. It was the character under these, behind 
these, which made their worth ; and the same character 
is to-day the immortal spark that makes ruin and ashes, 
not eloquent of faded prosperity, but instinct with life 
and hope. They represented moral worth more than 
money value. And the well-earned character of our 
city for mercantile honor and moral probity and out- 
flowing charity is returning to her usury in the day of 
her visitation. It is not her prosperity, her energy, 
her wealth, her misfortune even, that draw the hearts 
of all sections toward her, and make the wires electric 
with proffers of good-will, which as a Boston boy, if 
I may not speak as a Boston man, I trust she may 



308 



THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN. 



never be compelled to accept. Character only could 
do that, — a respect men may keep out of sight or 
deny in the prosperous day, but which they are glad 
to let shine out in the night-time of trial. That char- 
acter is not gone, friends. Our fathers bequeathed it. 
We have guarded it. May it be our bequest to our 
children's children. It is to build the new city, — 
build it in marble and granite and brick and iron, — 
while it is itself builded newly into the confidence and 
respect of the world. 

What is true of the city is true of every individual. 
Those of you who suffer most have undisturbed that 
which is most yours. It is capital for you in the marts 
of the world, capital for you in the esteem of men. I 
know there are exceptions, some who rate men only by 
bank account, society position, political honor, power, 
place. One I love, suffering misfortune, writes that he 
has few friends now. Put away the fact that losses 
make men morbid and sensitive, too many have wrong- 
estimates of values. Thank God, there are foul 
weather friends, and they are of the best. If we have 
character, our part, they will not desert us, their part. 
In certain things you are to be crippled : no crippling 
here. Mere dollars are going to be at a discount. 
Character is on the rise. Men see more clearly 
through the shams society makes them yield .to. In 
character, they detect fine gold without alloy, and they 
will not forget it. That is to-day at a premium ; and 
there is not a merchant, a laborer, a sewing-girl, who 
has that, but finds in it to-day a peace that were cheaply 
purchased at the price of every worldly gain. More 
than its worth with men is its inward solace and sup- 



THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN. 



309 



port. In saddest, silent hours, in despair moments, 
in weariness and heavy plodding, it shall be the many 
times comforter, verifying by experience the old hymn 
words, — 

" And, having nothing, yet hath all." 

I want now to say a word of a quality everywhere 
prominent and invaluable. I know how dainty people 
are as to pulpit language, and I feel how emasculate 
has pulpit language got to be by yielding to that dainti- 
ness. Daintiness of speech in the pulpit has been well- 
nigh its death. The pulpit should use the best word 
to express the thing it means, no matter if it can't show 
a blue-blood pedigree. Courage is a good word and 
reputable; but there is a quality that is not just it, 
which such times demand and such times develop, and 
at such times is good to draw upon. I mean plu-ck. 
It is courage in homespun, without broadcloth or vel- 
vet. We used to get it in army times. A plucky man 
was a something other than a brave one. In him, in- 
gredients, and a mixture of them, unlike the other. 
Pluck is a thing of resource, of will, of endurance, as of 
action. That quality of manhood disaster has never 
power over. It rises with occasion. The brave man 
may yield, the man of pluck never. 

And I see it everywhere how this thing is up and 
will abide. I catch it in hand-grasp, in expression of 
face and voice, in plan for the future, in the very strug- 
gles that may for a moment master. I do not think 
the battle-fields of any nation have seen a heroism 
truer than that the past week has developed. On roofs, 
heroes ; at hose and pipe, on ladder and amid flame, 
heroes, — pluck; but among men and women, among 



3io 



THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN. 



you, heroism not of devotion, but of endurance, such as 
lifts manhood and womanhood, and makes us care little 
for theology's descent of our race or science's ascent, 
grateful only that we can touch quality so near divine. 
I honor, I bow, I am abashed before the will, resolute 
to endure, that I have seen, — to endure neither doggedly 
nor selfishly, but with heart touched to finer issues, self 
held back, the woes of others mmembered. There is 
a word that even this spirit needs. Somebody says, 
" The real, stern part of any duty commences with the 
first positive sacrifice it demands, not in the making 
up of one's mind to perform it." Who of us that have 
resolved almost joyously on a hard course of duty but 
have realized that, — some of us with such force as to 
make us not coward, but renegade under the first actual 
pressure ? It is one thing to believe in a huge aggre- 
gate of duty or resolve, to have a vague sense of some- 
thing immense to face and determine to face it, and 
another thing to actually meet the first little detail. It 
will be likely to floor you. The first hunger or weari- 
ness or blood-letting takes all the romance out of the 
young soldier, and dulls his keen-sensed patriotism. 
Facts are not only stubborn, but awfully prosaic things. 
They are like many common-sense people, — very good, 
but very hard. And the little daily, unexpected, uncal- 
culated-upon detail of hard facts that is going to swarm 
innumerable and petty as Liliputian hosts upon you, 
with invisible but exasperating sting, — dear friends, 
these are to be your trials, here in the dead pull and 
pressure, when excitement is passed, and every man 
is gone to his own, and the buoyancy that comes of suf- 
fering with many has lapsed into the sense of suffering 



THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN. 3 1 1 

alone. I think it were wise at once to face that inevi- 
table truth which all experience verifies, and hold a 
reserve of power ; for it is not one emergency which is 
yours, but every hour possibly for years will bring up 
its little loss, and the little thing will be the hard thing. 
It is there that courage, principle, hope, faith, often fail. 
It is there that despair comes in, doubt, shame of self, — 
there that you will need a watchful and stubborn guard. 
And I think you will find it one of the blessed things 
that remain, — the only disaster ever reveals to us the 
blessing, — the power to bear suffering and loss. Friends, 
God does not send us suffering, discipline, disappoint- 
ment, but with them, more than they, the power to 
bear, the power to look serenely, cheerfully, hopefully 
at the facts as they are, even by slow gradation and 
increment, rising to the height other men besides Jesus 
have been lifted into, the height in which the garden- 
prayer becomes the soul's own will. We have it now 
almost as a household word what the poet has phrased, 

"Know how sublime a thing it is 
To suffer, and be strong " 

I do not know about its being sublime, — I do not 
think it worth while to consider that, — but I do know 
that there is a certain satisfying in the strength God 
gives us to suffer. There may be nothing sublime 
about it, but there is something for our working pur- 
poses better, — encouraging. We do not want to be 
buoyed by the idea of sublimity as the soldier is nerved 
by the idea of glory, but to set ourselves at the resolute 
pull of duty, as sons of God should. Suffering of any 
sort crushes only those who will to be crushed. It 



312 



THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN. 



lifts those who will to be lifted. That which is mani- 
fest in the Christ's career of the power to suffer — not 
to be crushed by, but to resist and rise under, suffer- 
ing — is no exceptional result, not his only, but ours. 
To us also is that power which carries through trials 
and obstacles, and over what threatened to be de- 
spairs and defeats writes victory. And there remains 
ever, over and above all, God, — with no averted face, — 
God, the comforter and the strength-giver. He never 
fails. All else gone, he remains ; and the more things 
beside him go, the more he stands revealed. 

This is lame and impotent, I know : at God's crises, 
men's words always are. It is only what I think I get 
of God that I dare to voice. The occasion is beyond 
man. The city that on her hills had sat secure, ashes 
are upon her, and in her streets is desolation. A 
providence of God, behind the mistake of man, has 
visited her. The mistake of man wastes, the provi- 
dence of God renews. From him are the things that 
remain, and greater are they than the things that are 
taken. Only will we walk with him, only will we be 
patient and brave, and the night shall end, as all nights 
end, in the joy of day. If it be high faith to see the 
arm of God by day, to feel it in the gloom, that is the 
very central essence and self of faith. 

Nobody believes that the future is to be less than 
the past. The after-glory and prosperity of our city is 
assured. The thing is to tide over these intervening 
times — days and nights, and worries and cares, the 
set of things that will delay, and will go wrong — with 
a good, broad, sturdy, Christian manhood and woman- 
hood. Let me emphasize the last adjective, Chris- 
tian. If Christianity is any worth, now is its crucial 



THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN. 



313 



test to many. I have no doubt as to what it can stand, 
as to what any of you can bear, standing by it. With 
that there remains more than enough to carry the 
weakest and the most sore-pressed through. The 
grandest opportunity many have ever had to make 
themselves into broad and hearty manhood and woman- 
hood is before them, an opportunity none may neg- 
lect. Already, Christian virtues shine with a calmer, 
clearer light. Already, men and women see them- 
selves nobler and stronger than they were. Self is 
less : others are more. Hands are more ready, hearts 
are more open, souls are more sensitive, more respon- 
sive. The wide, tender thing brotherhood is shows 
itself. Community in suffering begets community of 
sympathy ; and sympathy is expansive, and, once called 
out, never creeps back to the cold cradle of its birth. 
With the best of human nature called to the front, with 
the worst of it crowded back, with courage and strength, 
and hope and character, and human sympathy, and 
God, remaining by us, what, really, has been lost ? 
Weigh it, measure it, estimate it ! Let us thank God, 
let us consider and strengthen the things that remain, 
and take courage. Let. our courage be the cheerful 
courage that is above despairs. 

Let us stand in our lot, learn to suEer and to wait ; 
and, dear friends, it takes no prophet and no prophet's 
son to say that, though there should be no new dawn 
to a destroyed prosperity, there shall be a dawn bright- 
ening toward, glowing into day, in the heart and life 
of every humblest God's child, who, seeking and cling- 
ing to the things that remain, shall, try to build him- 
self up into that which God will accept, which thief, 
rust, moth, flame, convulsion, time, cannot take away. 



XXVI. 



THE BEST FRUIT THE LAST PLUCKED. 

"Two or three berries on the top of the uppermost bough." — Isaiah 
xvii., 6. 

That was a most remarkable polity which Moses 
had given his people, as remarkable in what it was 
manward as in what it was Godward. 

Of the great men of the ages, he stands foremost. I 
think we must feel so, when we regard him as a purely 
historical character, and come to see how it was the 
fashion, the credence, the superstition of the time to 
attribute to leaders in action and thought supernatural- 
help. The Greek, the Roman, the Egyptian, the Per- 
sian, had their mythologies, their troops of all manner 
of assisting deities. Their great men were but the 
media for the transmission of the superior will. In 
their great enterprises, one and the other deity acted 
or spoke through or controlled them. In a more 
marked way, because of the exceptional character of 
his faith, the Jew regarded his great men ; and we 
have caught our faith from his record and belief. But, 
more and more, as we become more and more ready to 
face the difficulties about the old conception, shall we 
become willing frankly to admit that the great wants 
and mistakes of the Mosaic law, side by side with its 
great virtues, go to disprove the idea that Moses acted 



THE BEST FRUIT THE LAST PLUCKED. 3 1 5 



and taught only under the inspiration and governance 
of the great " I am." 

No one who has really looked into the subject will 
be ready to commit himself to a belief of the Mosaic 
code, in outline and in detail, as a divine work. 

The tender humanity of this code, the regard even 
for the brute manifest in it, fill one with wonder and 
admiration. He finds much of the same which he 
misses out of our ordinary Christianity showing itself 
in faiths like those of the Moslem and the Persian, — 
faiths which, unquestionably, have got shaping from 
contact with the old Mosaic influence. Most wonder- 
ful as ubiquitous of peoples, while Christendom has 
been content to deride and despise and oppress them, 
they have been, in every onward, civilizing step made 
by the ages, among the motor powers, suggesting, 
shaping, controlling, leading, and saving. Some day, 
and at the hands of the great future, they will receive 
not the indolent and half-contemptuous dole of pity, 
but free and full sympathy, admiration, and gratitude. 
It does not need a Daniel Deronda to show us what 
is the devout home faith and the tender home life that 
the great Law-giver enjoined and the people follow. 
Our Bibles, and all history, show us the same; while, 
in all his wanderings, amid all his degradations, under 
all his peculiarities, in reverent fidelity to the instruction 
given, in steadfast allegiance to God and the duties 
prescribed to man, the Jew stands without peer in all 
the world's history. Where the question of fidelity is 
raised, ail Christian peoples must hang their head. 

No injunction of Moses was more admirable than 
that which related to the harvest. It shows how broad 



3 16 THE BEST FRUIT THE LAST PLUCKED. 

his thought, as his heart. Among a people, many of 
whom were inevitably to be poor, he desired to culti- 
vate the largest sympathy and charity, to bind together 
the more and the less prosperous by these cords. The 
harvests should be thanksgiving times, not to the rich 
only, but to the needy. It should be the poor man's 
festival and jubilee as well as the rich man's. The 
fields were not to be gone over a second time. The 
gleanings were for the unfortunate and the widow. On 
the outmost branch of the vine a few grapes, in the top 
of the uppermost bough of the olive two or three ber- 
ries, four or five in the outmost fruitful branches, should 
be left, the poor man's harvest, his ingathering. And 
so, through changes and through years, the beneficent 
law ran; and what Boaz did for Ruth, many another 
did, and many another sad and desolate lot was relieved 
and blessed. 

And the chances were that the poor man got best 
fruit ; for out at the end of the vine and up at the top 
of the branches, where the fruit lies in the unobstructed 
sun and wind, the grape would purple and the plump 
olive ripen as not lower down where thick leaves and 
interlacing twigs would choke the air and shut off the 
light and smother the product, that, like all other things, 
to its perfection requires air and light and room, — 
"latitude," without which neither fruit nor man, truth 
nor life, ripen. 

The use to which I shall put the text is somewhat 
this, — to try to make it tell a fact. I think we need to 
care more about that in all directions and in all things. 
After we have done what seems our duty, our best, done 
the most with it, got the most out of it, have ripened 



THE BEST FRUIT THE LAST PLUCKED. 2> l 7 

and gathered our harvest, there are left two or three 
berries in the top of the uppermost bough, and that, 
gleaners after ourselves as we all always should be, we 
shall find that our best is undone, the thing attempted 
not carried to its legitimate issue, so long as those two 
or three flaunt in the wind, upbraid our slovenliness 
and herald our incompleteness. Slovenly and incom- 
plete are we in most of our living : how generally and 
deeply so, we have little conception. 

As men and women, we have a pretty general feeling 
that we do about all we can do. We pride ourselves 
on the things done. In the very vague kind of confes- 
sion we at times make, which we never accept literally 
ourselves and do not mean that others shall, we accuse 
ourselves roundly of every manner of shortcoming; but 
"the miserable sinners" that we call ourselves is more 
a matter of routine and of rhetoric than of positive 
conviction. Generally, we assume, with a good deal of 
comfort to ourselves, that we have done our best, that 
there is no more to be reasonably expected, no more 
to be actually accomplished. The boy says it about 
his lessons, the man about his virtues. The mechanic 
and laborer and domestic have it to say about their 
duties and jobs. You never have fault to find at any 
shortcoming but that is the reply of others to you, of 
yourself to yourself, and in the larger and graver and 
more responsible duties of life that is the plea. 

I doubt if it be so in truth, — indeed, I know it not to 
be so. We are never up to our ability. W r e never live 
life out to the full, its whole, its parts. Talent, virtue, 
never have the best of us. There never comes the 
time when there is no more that we can do. Beyond 



3 1 8 THE BEST FRUIT THE LAST PLUCKED. 

where we stop, infinite capabilities lie, a broad domain 
into which God meant we should enter and possess. 
Always there are unreached, unachieved possibilities. 
We halt too soon, fail to pursue, tethered like some do- 
mestic animal who must not stray beyond bound, rather 
than free, as the bird, to range through limitless spaces 
among most refined and exquisite virtues, which, like 
flowers of Paradise, were meant to have their ripeness 
and their fragrance and their beauty this side the eter- 
nal city ; to brighten and cheer the way, not to wel- 
come and to crown our entering in. We rob ourselves, 
we rob earth of its best possessions, — reaches of human 
attainment, the native air and sphere of which is now 
and here ; we attain and keep content in a dull and low 
life rather than aspire to a life of full proportion and 
richness and finish. These human capacities are not 
worked up to their honest, reasonable limit, and we do 
not guess how near the divine the best humanity may 
be. I do not mean to say that there has not been too 
much in business, in study, in statesmanship, in poli- 
tics, nor deny that men have burned up life in the hot 
and restless career of its ambitions, displacing vigor 
and life with decrepitude and death. Even of that 
overwork there is much less than has been assumed. 
It is bad working, injudicious working, not overworking 
that wrecks and slays. I say it of our virtues, of our 
mental as moral capacities, that we keep them curbed 
into about what we suppose they should be, never let 
them out, and compel them, unchecked, to the very 
uttermost ; and so there is this great broad and black 
and yawning chasm, distressing and benumbing us, 
between virtue's self and the virtues ourselves attain, 



THE BEST FRUIT THE LAST PLUCKED. 319 

a chasm between man and God. His virtue and our 
virtue, infinite that might be, not bridged but almost 
closed. I want to keep my thought to the more per- 
sonal relations and attitudes of the soul, and of these 
you will come to own it true that we never push them 
to possible, to demanded ultimates. I do not suppose 
that a man ever lifted himself up to a height of virtue, 
that there did not at the same time come to him a 
consciousness of other heights possible, and possible 
for him, — things not only for vision, but for occupa- 
tion. ''The more you do, the more you may," is what 
we tell children, but it is at that that manhood balks 
in the higher things. The virtues are not put at their 
stress, that which is their just exercise. There are 
two or three berries always at the top of the outmost 
boughs untouched. Let us see this by example. 

In a time of business stagnation like this we now 
have, the reply that is at once made to every charita- 
ble effort is : " It is no use to try to get money now. 
Our merchants are feeling poor. There is nothing 
doing. There is no money to be had." And so that 
very hard road which he who would establish or foster 
a charity has, at best times, to travel, is badly blocked 
at the start. When you are leading a forlorn hope, I 
have found the forlorner the hope, the more the de- 
mand for you to lead. If the forlornness do not kill 
you outright, or make the worst of cowards of you, it 
inspires you with a confidence that compels victory. 
The cry all round now is : " It is no use. Everybody is 
poor, there is no money." I have it direct the past 
week from some of the prominent dressmakers that 
they were never so driven, never found it so hard to 



320 THE BEST FRUIT THE LAST PLUCKED. 

please customers, and that dresses were never more 
elaborate and costly. Unless my eyes deceive me and 
my knowledge is vain, there is an immense amount of 
selfish, extraordinary extravagance among the men 
as the women of this needy time. That there are 
grave and unwonted economies — some of them borne 
sweetly and serenely and silently — I know; and, to all 
such, sympathy and respect and honor. The fact is, 
friends, — and let us be men enough to own it, — that, 
even in these straitened times, we all find two or 
three berries on the top of the outmost branches which 
we can pluck for the sating of our selfishness. Poor 
as we may feel, there they are, ready to our craving. 
The thing we want, that we are going to have, we 
somehow manage to have the means of getting. The 
exchequer is not so low but it will honor the draft. 
The means will be devised to meet the cormorant that 
craves, covets, and consumes, — shall I add, corrupts ? 
It is always noted that, in seasons of distress, indul- 
gence and extravagance reign. When there are de- 
clared to be no means for better, more honorable 
things, the means are abundant for them. 

This is the lower side, the darker view. No time is 
so good time for the charities as the hard time. The 
charity that never faileth fails not then. The pinch 
that a true man feels, he realizes that another must feel, 
and it thaws him and broadens him ; and, while he 
straitens himself, he remembers the strait of another. 
Some of the best things that have ever been done by 
that spirit of charity so generally felt to have its head- 
quarters in our city have been done since the times of 
shrinkage, uncertainty, and stagnation set in ; and I 



THE BEST FRUIT THE LAST PLUCKED. 32 1 

have no doubt but, poor as people say they are, if 
to-morrow some great, unquestionable, genuine benefi- 
cence were made known, it would be cheerfully and 
amply and immediately responded to. Inspire people 
with confidence in the good, the claim, the necessity 
announced, and they at once begin to look about and 
see if it be not practicable for them to do something, 
stripped and poor as they feel ; and they always find, 
and surprise themselves with finding, two or three 
berries at the top of the outmost branch, overlooked 
while the harvest was full, that have been hanging 
there, ripe and rich, till the Lord's need should call for 
them. I don't know, but somehow this quenchless 
spirit of humanity, in all but the mean and the stingy 
and the narrow and the cold, gets a microscopic vision 
and a great and vital warmth at every cry and pressure 
of misfortune, and springs up to say, " I am my 
brother's keeper," and finds the means where under 
only the ordinary pressure of life ; but now it seemed 
as if no means were possible. No skilful operator 
so touches the eyes of the blind as the spirit of right 
brotherhood touches the vision of the soul. No fire- 
heat so thaws the torpor of the freezing body as the 
fire-heat of a right humanity thaws the torpid sympa- 
thies, compelling the heart to say : •" After all, in dis- 
tresses of others, nothing that I have is mine. Let me 
be straitened, let me suffer, rather than that they 
perish." 

I think that the handful that Ruth gleaned for 
Naomi made the sweetest of home-bread, — sweet with 
a sweetness sweeter than that of the finest wheat. 
I think that the olive and the grape plucked from the 



322 THE BEST FRUIT THE LAST PLUCKED. 

outmost branches warmed the heart of the eater and 
helped keep warm the heart of the owner ; and that 
which a man finds he can do for another, after he sup- 
poses he has already done all that he can, makes more 
man of him, thrills him, and broadens and blesses him, 
takes the ugly selfishness out of him, and stands the 
manhood in him up straight before his own gaze, without 
a bend or a falter or a flaw. " More blessed is it to 
give than to receive," are words that have come to us 
from the lips of the Teacher, — not through the Gos- 
pels, but almost as a chance remembrance of the apos- 
tle, — a little waif fraught with richest worth, caught up 
and borne to the generations for their seeding and 
harvest, as the winged seeds of fields and gardens are. 
Every man who honestly gives — not with a fling, but 
with a sympathy, not with a grudge, but with a glad- 
ness, not because he must, but because he loves to, not 
as a get-off, but as a true giving — tests the veracity of 
the Christ-word, tastes the beatitude. And it most 
blesses him whose giving is of the two or three berries 
on the top of the outmost branches, as it is when the 
humblest poor divide and subdivide their money with 
those poorer than themselves ; and God, who watches 
all things, will see to it that the increase of their seed 
shall not be lost in the future harvests. 

Let us take a yet more private and personal, and it 
shall be a really cardinal virtue. In the multitude of 
human duties, we may not speak of this and the other 
as prominent and paramount in necessity. What we 
want to think about the virtues is our obligation to 
them all, — even to pluck the two or three berries on 
the top of their outmost branches. 



THE BEST FRUIT THE LAST PLUCKED. 323 

But for the moment let me present to you the so- 
much-needed, so-much-neglected virtue, patience. It 
is a virtue which has a great deal more of the power 
of endurance than men allow, which we never wait to 
see fairly out, never come to where there is no more 
that it can do. Job, our favorite picture and symbol 
of a patient man, did not see his way to the end of it. 
He did not exhaust it. There were two or three ber- 
ries even he did not gather. And when we have 
borne and forborne to the utter, even the bitter end, 
with man, with things, with self, with God, as we think, 
there is yet more that the spirit of patience may bear. 
And we catch ourselves confessing it the very moment 
after we have let go our hold of it, and have sent our 
released, imperious will crashing down in among the 
courtesies of intercourse or the affections of home. 
We see that we might have held out yet longer, that it 
would have been easy to have done it, and that the two 
or three unplucked berries would have yielded a more 
luscious fruit than all the before-gone harvest. We 
begin to be impatient and irritable and unreasonable 
long before there is the shadow of excuse for it ; and 
they are most so who have kept patient up to a certain 
point, and then have removed restraint, given it and 
themselves up. As the waters dribbling through the 
dam, neglected, pour and tear and sweep and devastate, 
and carry ruin and wreck, so with the impetuousness 
that has burst the bounds of patience. It had been 
better to have been impatient all along than by letting 
go to have brought, in flood and overthrow, disaster so 
grave. There are three things to be observed with 
patience, — to hold in, to hold on, and to hold out. 



324 THE BEST FRUIT THE LAST PLUCKED. 

So with any virtue, with all the virtues. They have 
a wonderful elasticity. Each one, like charity, covers 
its multitude. You can go on and on, and still its 
power holds. There is always something more it can 
do, some new ground it can occupy, some other work 
it can accomplish. There is literally no end to its 
mission. I think what the life of Christ did, over and 
above all other living, was not the introducing us to 
new graces of character so much as the making us 
cognizant of the new reaches to which well-known 
graces were capable of being strained. As into old 
words, by his new spirit, he put new life, so into 
old graces, and made a Gospel seem to be studded 
with new virtues, as the heavens seem to be studded 
with new constellations to the novice who first handles 
the telescope, when it is only the new vision in him. 
The stars were there. Men did not know them. Only 
he took old traits, familiar duties, and transfigured 
them by the way in which he pushed them, — treated 
them as things not to be carried a certain convenient 
distance and then to be dropped, or to be stood by, as 
the soldier stands by his ordered musket at parade 
rest, but to be carried the more firmly and resolutely 
from the point of ordinary halt, — carried till the Great 
Commander should order the laying down of all arms 
and the rest that comes of victory. It was the two or 
three berries on the top of the outmost bough that 
made the difference. Where men left off, he the more 
zealously worked ; what they neglected to pluck, he 
gathered into the garner, left nothing to the birds or 
to other men's gleaning, — sowed and reaped and 
gleaned himself. 



THE BEST FRUIT THE LAST PLUCKED. 325 

So it is again with the bearing of pain, the burden 
of sorrow. There are two or three berries yet, after we 
have reached the bounds of supposed endurance. A 
little holding out shows us that we can bear a little 
more ; and, when that little more is borne, the brave 
soul, the soul whose courage is "a cheerful courage," 
no dull despair without hope, finds there is power still 
to bear a little more. In the old Inquisitions, when 
brave men died and tortured men would not recant, 
they relaxed the boot and the screw and the wheel a 
little, that the man whose pain had mastered conscious- 
ness might come to, and save himself by retracting; 
but the wheel turned again, and the screw wound, and 
the boot pressed, for the revived man had taken new 
lease to bear, — there was yet more that he could suffer 
in the thought of the Master suffering behind him, and 
the crown that he saw ready to crown him before. 
And when we come to the great griefs and aches, and, 
sore-bruised, it seems impossible for one moment 
longer to bear even a divine will, somehow, before we 
quite yield, we catch sight of the two or three berries 
at the top of the outmost bough, and gird anew our 
wasting powers and cry the old cry, and submit, till 
the submission surely, slowly, sweetly grows into the 
acquiescing that brings at one our will with God's. 

And so I have given you my reading of the Script- 
ure word, a hint which you may take and apply very 
broadly for yourselves and very helpfully. What we 
want to know in life — not to say that we know, but to 
know as the heart knows beyond peradventure — is 
that there is a great deal more to life in all directions 
than we allow, and that we can grow to a great deal 



326 THE BEST FRUIT THE LAST PLUCKED. 

more in life than we do. It is a very much broader, as 
grander, thing to live than we make it. Virtues and 
duties cover more demand, and lift us to other levels ; 
and man, instead of the pigmy he is content to be, — 
"an infant crying in the night," — is created to be 
colossal, compact, and well-developed every how, — capa- 
ble, not like fabled Atlas, of carrying the round orb on 
his shoulders, but of carrying in his life the microcosm of 
all truth and virtue and endurance, making it the reflex 
of the all-perfectness which flashed out for a little time 
from Judea and Galilee, leaving not darkness again 
at its going away, but the remainder of influence to 
lighten, to lead, to sanctify, to save. 

By the wayside or on the edges of the autumn woods, 
left by truant boys or the gatherers for the market, at 
the top of the outmost branches the red berry sways 
to and fro. On the outmost branches of apple-trees 
hang the remainder glories overlooked by the gatherer, 
greeting the eye, tempting the palate, as not those 
carefully garnered at the foot. A savory imagination 
invests them with a desire that the ready-to-hand does 
not provoke. They are both the remainder and the 
record of harvest, the mute "Well done!" In the 
autumn of life, one sees all along, swaying and ruddy, 
out at the end of topmost branches, ripe fruits which 
he might have gathered in to himself by only more of 
persistence and courage. The best things are not the 
things harvested, but the things ungarnered, the things 
beyond where he stopped work ; and only could he go 
gleaning over his whole life, into the treasury of God, 
as well as of his own satisfaction, what other harvest 
would he gather! In some things, he may yet ; but it 



THE BEST FRUIT THE LAST PLUCKED. 327 

is for the young to remember that the Lord of the har- 
vest asks of his workers that they be gleaners too, 
and that the two or three berries, the very outmost 
and uttermost, be brought in with the rest, that, in the 
taking of the account, it may be seen that theirs has 
been thorough work, — the ploughing, the planting, the 
reaping, and the gleaning. 



Nov. 26, 1876. 



XXVII. 



OUR YEARS. 

"The days of our years." — Psalm xc, io. 

The Psalmist speaks of the days of our years as 
being about so many. It is a time-measure that he is 
giving us. And a very solemn measure it is, because 
it is the suggestion of the limit beyond which one can- 
not expect that the days of his years shall take him, 
or, if he do, that it is to be at the expense of labor and 
sorrow. Somewhat sombre the words are, and I think 
paint the picture a little darkly ; for sometimes the best 
power and beauty of a life are the climax and finish 
that come after the threescore and ten have passed, — 
the halo years, as we not infrequently find them in a 
serene and beautiful age, the ripened coloring of the 
time behind, mellowed and enriched by the mingling 
with foregleams of the everlasting time before. 

The days of our years ! The phrase has been telling 
itself to me for a long while, nor have I been well able 
to get my thought beyond the phrase. Do you not 
sometimes find that a compact form of words, embrac- 
ing a full truth, will arrest your attention and impress 
you with majesty and weight, with force and truth, with 
vast, thorough completeness, so as to cut off, to forbid 
anything more than their repetition, while you are filled 
with, possessed by a great conviction, voiceless, lan- 



OUR YEARS. 



329 



guageless ? There are many texts of Scripture one 
hesitates to handle, to enlarge upon, which one attempts 
to speak of in vain, so mighty are they, so inclusive, so 
exhaustive, so all in all, so wide, so deep, so beyond 
shaping into words, — and these the most satisfying, 
the most nourishing, the most tenderly cherished, reit- 
erating themselves to us, and leaving us in the great 
silence that is not mere dumb void, but thick-peopled 
with unutterable emotion, belief, satisfying. I feel as 
if this, our to-day text, preached itself through its sharp 
terseness more directly to our convictions than any 
enlargement I can give it ; and that to sit here, as our 
good friends the Quakers would, in silence, pondering 
the few, full words, were of more value, that for each 
one to be his own preacher were to his better good, 
than only to glean after such words as the preacher may 
be able to drop. The plummet that any one may drop 
into any other one's soul is many fathom short of that 
which each may drop into his own. 

It is very difficult, under whatever mood of mind, to 
sit down and look justly at the days of one's years, to 
get at one's unbiassed impression, so much inevitably 
we surge one side or the other of the exact line of 
the truth. 

One hardly knows what to say of them, or when he 
begins to say does not know where to end. It is as if 
one were looking into a mist to recall, if he cannot see, 
the way he has come ; to shape, where there are no defi- 
nite landmarks, the way he is to go. One gets bewil- 
dered as he repeats and re-repeats, so vast is their 
suggestion of what has been, what has failed to be, 
their immense, their momentous doings and undoings 



330 



OUR YEARS. 



and misdoings. Wordsworth says that we come trail- 
ing clouds of glory, and that heaven lies about us in 
our infancy ; and Job has it that man is born to 
trouble ; and theology has it that he is born in sin and 
is sinful altogether, his days few and evil, and under 
that conviction generations have shivered as they 
have come and gone, the cold chill of such belief un- 
nerving the better thing they would love to be. We 
need something other than either or than all such 
teaching, to have some thought of the days of our 
years somewhat more wholesome, more true than the 
word of either modern or ancient poet, or any theology. 

The days of our years, looked at as time, are days of 
a first feebleness, when innocence is only ignorance, a 
negation of virtue, where sleep, mutter, burst the em- 
bryonic passions, — days in which the child prophesies of 
the man in part, in which, whatever trail of glory comes 
with it soon gets merged and commingled with things 
not heavenly, and the great spirit struggle begins. 
Then, the days of our years are growing days, expanding 
days, in which, under the glow of the morning sun, we 
put away the child, put out strength by pruning as by 
spreading, develop into our earlier manhood. Then 
they are maturing days, days of drill, experience, duty, 
when the great subject in every heart, though it never 
be outspoken, is life, what to do with it, what to be in 
it, what to make of it, when we would welcome the 
egress of all low as the ingress of all high, yet are 
swept from the sheltering rock of our better desire by 
the strong, swift currents that eddy about us, and ever 
and anon, in some moment of fiercer swirl, are swept 
from our protection and hurried within the embrace of 



OUR YEARS. 



331 



the vortex that remorselessly forbids our landing again, 
and keeps us within the hurrying eddy ; and then they 
are the silvered days of age, of retrospect, of waning, 
and of waiting. 

What the days of our years, looked at as character, to 
any of us are it is easy enough to declare. The verdict 
is immediate and unanimous. If it should find voice 
from you as I speak, it would be without dissent. The 
good man, the bad man, the careful and thoughtful, the 
careless and thoughtless, the earnest as the indifferent, 
— each and every would say they have been unsatisfac- 
tory. Looking them over cursorily, thoroughly, " I am 
not satisfied with them," we all say inside, where 
speech so much seems more to our conscience and con- 
sciousness than when it gets sound, losing the sacred- 
ness of power as it puts off the sacredness of silence. 
The most self-satisfied person loses every particle of 
self-satisfaction, as he answers before his own soul what 
the days of his years have been, — what he has been in 
them, with his obligations, his opportunities, his abili- 
ties ; how he has met divine command and human 
expectation ; how he has answered his own aspirations ; 
with what measure he has filled his time ; of what 
material builded his existence ; how fashioned, fed his 
soul. As the leper drew the cloth about his lip and 
went wandering in solitary places, startling the unwary 
traveller with the wailing monotone, " Unclean ! un- 
clean!" so the soul, wandering solitary amid the relics 
of its past, startles itself by the hopelessness of the cry 
that unbidden invades its silences, — unsatisfied, unsat- 
isfied. " Vanity, vexation, weariness., dross, nothing," 
in our agony we cry; and the wail of our despair 



332 



OUR YEARS. 



drowns the promptings of our hope. But despairs 
never win the kingdom of heaven. To despair is to be 
coward, renegade. It is the crime of an alien, not the 
attitude of a son. 

No one will, I suppose, be tempted to contradict me 
when I assert of the days of our years that they are 
days of struggles. So men are wont to esteem them. 
Call life whatever else you will, it is a struggle ; call 
man whatever else you please, he is a wayfarer amid 
snares and pitfalls, opposed by secret and by open foes, 
with weight upon him and toil before him to keep 
a narrow track through a broad country, over which 
storms sweep, and blinding lights, alternating with 
midnight darkness, dazzle and confound. Poets and 
painters join with Scripture and experience to show 
life to us as a struggle. We who spend our summers 
by the sea are familiar with that peculiar troubling of 
the water which tells of the pressure and crowd and 
struggle for existence beneath, as the lesser fish at- 
tempt to escape the jaws of the stronger enemy; and 
everywhere in crowded cities and countries, it has ' 
been in history, it is in observation, the struggle of 
the many not for the right to live, so much as for that 
support to life without which the right is little. Every- 
where, in the waters beneath, in the air around, in the 
existence about us, in savage, in civilized as in animal 
and insect life, first, always, last, this strife. Men call 
it part, product of a primal curse. I call it part, a step 
in development, outgrowth, ripening, something in the 
progress which is to ripen ultimately into order and 
quiet and harmony and completeness. And this strug- 
gle is not confined to the lower species, ts, to 



OUR YEARS. 



333 



fish, to beasts, to insects, to primordial germs, not to 
that outer life of man which after threescore years and 
ten is rounded by a sleep. 

It follows man into the deeper life of his soul, where 
the aspiring is not for the meat that perishes, the sub- 
stance which is temptation to the moth and the rust 
and the thief, but for the higher, the divine life. That 
life of Jesus — which was no brilliant meteor flashing 
across a world's amazement, but the established light 
at the zenith for every generation's blessing — was no 
exceptional dower of a parental love, or miracle, — wit- 
ness to an exceptional ambassador, — but outgo, out- 
growth of a struggling soul, whose fealty drew him 
back into the infinite bosom whence he issued ; whose 
strengths were struggles issuing into victories ; whose 
completed, harmonized being grew by and because of 
struggle into that so fair transfiguring, which before the 
wakened gaze of all true spirits glistens with a more 
exceeding whiteness than did his living body, what 
time Moses and Elias talked with him before drowsy 
and wondering and misunderstanding disciples. As 
fair buildings, under wise designings of the architect 
and the accurate cunning of the mechanic, grow in 
beauty and proportion and strength out of uncouth 
stones, unsightly mortar, and stubborn lumber, out of 
brawny muscle and unseemly sweat of ignorant and 
unsavory workmen, out of the struggles of man against 
harsh and unyielding conditions, so is the symmetry 
of every human life builded out of man's struggles, only 
he submit to the plan of the great Architect, only work 
he as God's workman, and fitly clip and square and 
frame together his raw material. It is not the swift- 



334 



OUR YEARS. 



growing mushroom, which, while the dews wake and 
watch, grows to its perfection, that stands head of 
God's great plantage, but the century-grown tree, 
that has struggled against storm and wind, and heat 
and cold, and wet and dry, and light and dark ; and no 
swift-grown, carefully tended soul is type and excel- 
lence of the true man, but that scarred and furrowed 
by the ultimate defeats and victories, despairs and 
hopes of the struggles which God plants before his 
prize, as he plants thorns before his rose. 

It is not only that God does not let one sparrow fall 
to the ground without him, but not one good thought, 
feeling, purpose, deed. Our smiles, our tears, our 
prayers, our hopes, our efforts, are all numbered, as well 
as the hairs of our heads. The grass for to-morrow's 
oven is not alone clothed, but every righteous intent ; 
and we are little of faith, if we do not comprehend it. 
Nothing that is genuine is naked, fruitless. The strug- 
gle that almost costs your life, which prostrates your 
very soul, which draws the thick curtain of darkness 
that you feel to joint and marrow, though it seem to 
have no adequate issue, is not void, is not lost. It is 
an immortal integer in the life you would grow to. It 
is not void, it is not vain, it does not return upon you 
empty. Trust God for that, and turn to struggle 
again, not cast down, not in despair, not to murmur, 
doubt, give all up, but to continue the pilgrim's plod- 
ding way, conquering the opposition, removing the ob- 
struction, toiling along the plain, struggling up the 
height, sure that every well-intended endeavor lessens 
the weight and the length, while it brings nearer to 
that goal, whose this side ends all struggle, whose 



OUR YEARS. 



335 



other side begins reward. For you, for all, struggle is 
the day's duty. The days of our years must be that. 
Accept the law, and do your best under it, with no re- 
pining at unattainecl result. Result is attained at 
once, and in every active effort, though you cannot see, 
measure, gauge it. Faith is your need, not sight. 
You do not, you cannot see result, for you are only 
the sower. It is the reaper who knows results, not the 
man who stalks over rough earth, and casts the seed 
into the open and hungry furrow, but he who garners, 
when the suns have left their golden smile upon 
ripened ear or fruit. Who are we that we should de- 
mand to know the product of these days of our years ? 
The demand on us is faithful sowing, each day's toil, 
conscience work that we may earn conscience wage. 

It is ours — as the workman of the spring — to be 
steadfast, enduring, seeking each day the means by 
which to' grow toward the higher life : it is God's, as 
the harvestman, to stand at the gate in at which the 
increase goes, and take account of result, and charge it 
in his book of reckoning. It is not ours to quarrel 
with conditions, but to meet and answer them ; to fill, 
being full even with the humblest elements of the 
higher life ; to accept the fertilizing helps of discipline 
and experience, of providence and life, by which they 
shall germinate and grow, and ripen into the desired 
consummation. For, if life be struggle, it is struggle as 
the law of growth. Better than the fact of struggle 
in these days of our years is the fact that struggle 
never dies out in struggle, but takes new form in 
growth, not so much a resurrection of that which once 
has been as a prolonging into farther life of that which 



336 



OUR YEARS. 



is. Struggle is one law of being, but not a dead, fruit- 
less law. Without it, only stagnation, death. With 
it, possibility, growth, life. We murmur at, we quarrel 
with, what we call destiny. We reluct at discipline, and 
refuse our shoulders to the yoke. These are the con- 
ditions of our being : refused, souls die ; accepted, they 
live ; spurned, life becomes, amid all painted pleasures, 
dry, juiceless, withered, — and worse, not only hopeless 
of, but incapable of desiring as of reaching noble ends. 
Embraced, they show themselves — what Jesus was to 
them on the way to Emmaus, even while their eyes 
were holden, and they knew him not — the Saving 
Power. While we may, one way, say of struggle what 
Arnold in his great poem says of sorrow : struggle is 

" Shadow to life, moving where life doth move ; 
Nor to be laid aside until one lays 
Living aside, with all its changing states, — 
Birth, growth, decay, love, hatred, pleasure, pain, 
Being and doing," — 

another way, in the same author's words, we may 
speak of struggle as doing its work upon us and within 
us 

" Till all the sum of ended life, 
All that total of a soul, 

Which is the things it did, the thoughts it had, 
The self it wove, with woof of viewless time 
Crossed on the warps invisible of acts, — 
The outcome of him on the universe, — 
Grows pure and sinless." 

To grow pure and sinless ! What pearl of price 
would not one sacrifice for that ? For what gem of so 
pure a ray serene as the soul made lowly-wise by the 
noble living which ripens into the more and more in 



OUR YEARS. 



337 



him who, wiser than the knight of old, refusing to 
judge the shield by the side of brass it presents, rides 
round, and finds the obverse glittering with pure gold, 
accepts not the dark and frowning side of discipline, 
but holds it till he can see the benign intent and ex- 
tract the blessing ? Men go mourning all their days, 
and speak of the universe of God as a valley of shadows 
and tears, and lose the whole significance, as magnifi- 
cence, of the culture God has established for us ; and 
we graduate out of this his school not with the honors, 
ripened in manhood and ready to be saint, but puny 
and enfeebled and dissatisfied and sour, earth and 
its teachings having never lifted us to a conception of 
the things of an immeasurable glory, which he becomes 
capable of possessing who works mightily the will of 
God while, mightily, the will of God works in him. 
Say of it as we will,- the struggle of the soul for its exist- 
ence always carries with it a sense of satisfaction, 
though it see not positive award. Every fidelity has 
that much. Beside, behind, independent of award is it, 
a something that gives a great content, that makes 
a sure joy, that upholds and cheers, even while the 
battle is waged and the sore-pressed spirit struggles 
against the mustering of heavy odds. It is not when 
the night comes and he gets his penny of award at the 
hands of the master that the true workman has his joy 
and content. He does not have to wait for them ; but, 
as every honest blow in the burden and heat of the day 
tells of honest work, they follow, consequent of cause. 
It is not as the victory-shout succeeds to the deafening 
roar of cannon that the exultation leaps to the heart of 
the soldier; but that is part with every fierce and stern 



338 



OUR YEARS. 



moment of conscious discharge of duty. It is not as 
we grasp prizes, wear laurels, receive plaudits, that the 
great surges of satisfaction come, but in the moments 
of devotion and fealty, while the strife goes, the end is 
unattained, the day uncertain. Socrates claimed to be 
always in communion with his demon, his guardian 
spirit. Every man has his attending guardian, which 
at the moment of true endeavor, even when sorest 
pressed and visibly accomplishing least, upbears him, 
and puts new and redoubling energy into his spirit. 

The days of man's years are not mere years of com- 
pelled endurance : he is not a moping, tottering, un- 
hoping burden-bearer, but, inspired by convictions of 
his duty, as God's child, conscious of fealty what- 
ever of momentary dereliction creep in now and then, 
he grows day by day, by and through his struggles, 
against adversities and evils without, propensities and 
passions within, singing silent hallelujahs in his heart, 
even as the toiling laborer whistles at his task, or the 
sailor, tugging at anchor or at rope, lightens the strain 
upon his muscles with snatches of cheery song. It is 
a great guerdon of God that we are not carried to the 
skies on beds of ease, but that every man's sky is 
reached through perversities, and antagonisms such as 
would break one only a man, such as make a son of 
God. If at the Jordan Jesus had asked that the cup 
might pass from him, fainting at its first presentation, 
the evil wiles that clustered about his early manhood 
never had fled from him. Beginning there the never- 
intermitted struggle, his perfected manhood — man- 
hood grown out of the struggles of the days of his 
years — uttered only the grandly qualified prayer of so 



OUR YEARS. 



339 



rich experience, <4 Nevertheless, not as I will, but as 
thou wilt ! " Such divine mastery was there through 
the trials he has borne ! 

The kingly warrior, in the heat of the battle, is said 
to have seen in the clouds above him the glorified 
symbol, and its hallowing legend, "By this conquer." 
Upon every cloud, in our every encounter with which 
these days of our years are checkered, each one may 
find the same symbol, illumined by the same. 

They are his stimulus and hope, whatever the peril 
of his fight. It is faith in the spirit of that which the 
emblem typifies that cohsgcrates struggle, that out of 
struggle compels victory, and by victory, growth. The 
days of the years of a man's life are growing years, if 
he so will. Growth is not through grace, divine gift ; 
but growth is through struggle, human fidelity, the 
shaping and training one's self by and because of what 
one calls hard things. It is the mission of hard things 
to prevent the soul from losing itself amid the little- 
nesses of ordinary life ; to exalt it into that power and 
might which, without fear or trembling, shall enable 
one to secure to himself things high, pure, noble, 
enduring, to run with patience his race, and finish his 
course with joy. 

And, if we are to regard the new days of the new 
year as the renewal of struggle, let us learn the other 
wisdom, and regard them as also the renewal of hope. 
Hope should be never dead. It is immortal. Does 
not the poet say that it " springs eternal " ? 

The past is a record : you cannot help, alter that. 
What is writ is writ. The best that you can do with 
most of it is to bury it and forget it. At any rate, get 



340 



OUR YEARS. 



the tease and fret out of it. It can be only healthy to 
you so. The future is an opportunity ; and, as the old 
monks used to write new words over old and once-used 
parchments, I think we may hope, in the days of the 
years to be, to write out some of the sad things of the 
days of the years that have been by the better thing 
we grow to. If we cannot expunge the past wholly 
from the tablets of memory and being, we can write 
upon the fading page a brighter and braver record. 
In a true human life there is never place for long 
despondency, much less for despairs, for regrets, peni- 
tence, resolve, never for suicides, — those moral, spirit- 
ual suicides men unconsciously commit, when they 
allow themselves to be overcome by the struggles 
that were never sent as masters, tyrannies, only to 
be servants, means to victories and growths. 

Those of you who chanced to be abroad at the mid- 
hour on the last night of the year must have felt the 
beauty. The storm was over, the air was still, the 
earth, a calm white, lay and rested beneath the calmer 
blue. Stately stars kept silent watch; and a silver 
moon walked as queen through the great space above, 
bathing the broad, untrodden white with floods of 
light. And this peace, this beauty, was but the out- 
growth of struggle, what the storm and contention of 
the day had culminated in. And so no calm but out 
of storm, no growth but out of struggle, fierce pains 
of birth, fiercer conflicts of experience, growth by 
these, then peace. 

Jan. 4, 1880. 

. H 29 8 2 Hi 



